#just think it's funny that like. Eiffel and Pryce would both hate this

[clonerightsagenda]

Possibly my *least* popular w359 opinion is that postcanon Doug and Miranda are friends and everyone else hates it. The others have all these preconceived notions about who they are/should be, and that has to get stressful. Doug has seen like 5 humans and isn’t an ableist jerk about Miranda’s eyes. Miranda tolerates him because he’s not weird about her. He’s the only one who knows her well enough to notice when her memories start trickling back and doesn’t say anything because that’s not anyone’s business. She offers to make him new lungs. They hated each other for personal reasons. They killed each other. They’re the only ones who understand this aspect of each other. They sit quietly in a room while the rest of the crew is piled outside the door trying to supervise out of paranoia but they are literally Just Hanging Out.

[boyruggeroii]

ohhhh final thoughts on wolf 359👀👀?? I’ve finished it like 2 weeks ago and I’m still. mourning lol

Quick answer: I liked it a lot. I was expecting a more tragic ending (before Minkowski woke back up I thought they were all going to die swallowed by Wolf 359 then I thought it was a fever dream, honest to god) and I'm not sure if I'm happier this way or not.

Longer answer: I wasn't as attached to the Goddard three (I'm sorry but I hate military types, bye Clark) as you were, but I absolutely loved them and they were such enjoyable characters. I completely agree with you re: Pryce, I think you've said it all really. As for a reception ark, she didn't want one lmao. And I don't think the story went there anyway. She's not quite herself anymore or she's only half of herself, end of story. And it's a horrible thing to do, or weird at any rate. She's not dead but she (Pryce) is not alive anymore either. Same for Eiffel, but with different consequences for him. (Also I can't believe that it could have all worked out in their favour if he hadn't come back. Unbelievable)

I really liked all the memory stuff actually. I've always been fascinated by what makes us tick and it's been proven (and I'm a firm believer) that what we are is a result of both nature and nurture and I love media that explore that. Nice take on AIs too!!

As for the characters, loved loved loved Hilbert, and loved how he died too if you can believe it! (Broke my heart tho, I'm still mourning him, he deserved so much better from life in general). Minkowski and Lovelace get better with time (she doesn't like Hilbert because she doesn't understand him more than she does because he killed all her friends is she for real? Terrible kind of person. And Minkowski too much of a soldier)

All the female characters in general are amazing and I absolutely adored them. Alana and Hera's relationship was so interesting and I'd listen to an entire podcast with just her and Jacobi or her and Hera, who's great too (and they literally gave her anxiety this keeps being hilarious). Memoria, just, Memoria. And all its consequences

Jacobi my other love (lots of them in this podcast). I have a weakness for characters that are arsonist adjacent. Ep can't remember with his revenge plan was just. One of the best.

I obviously got attached to Eiffel cause he's funny but thank god I don't have to work with him or someone like him. I have complicated feelings on his memory loss. His daughter is basically dead to him, she's a stranger and he can't really mourn her. He lost a child and doesn't know it which for him (and most people) would be worse than dying, so yeah. Also THE PRISON SENTENCE

I'll probably have more to say in the next few minutes hours days but for now this is it

I'm so happy I decided and managed to listen to it. And there were so many episodes where I laughed so much oh gods, especially after Jacobi and Maxwell arrived

[stilitana]

so i listened to this embarassingly quickly but let’s chalk that up to the self-isolation/working from home and leave it at that

wolf 359 reactions under the cut (spoilers):

firstly, that soundtrack was so good and i’ll be listening to those piano pieces forever

this show demonstrated the eternal power of the agatha christie principle: gather a ragtag cast of characters who’ve all got beef with each other, and trap them in a small space together. cue the instant tension and inevitable weighty revelations.

i adore that amid all the drama/action, there were so many moments when the writers let the narrative breathe a little and just allowed the characters to talk to each other, and play games with one another. the word games were delicious. these were often moments of levity and good character building, but they also all moved relationships forward or revealed something new, so don’t ever let anybody say that having chill little funny moments is useless narrative fluff. these were the best moments.

empty man cometh might be my favorite. am i alone now? and memoria were also just...so good. a lot of the mini-episodes were excellent as well, especially all the character ones. variations on a theme might be my favorite of the shorts.

normally i’m impatient and skip anything i perceive as extraneous to the central narrative, and come back to it later--im so glad i didn’t, the live episode was hilarious. ashamed that i even tried to skip change of mind because i was so impatient to see what was happening, but i felt too bad so not even five minutes into the next ep, i went back and listened to it, and that was the right move...it was so good.

every single character was fantastic. every single one. they were all complex--even the less central characters had at least a moment or two where they struck a different note, showed another side of themselves. kepler was the stand out on this front for me. i didn’t care at all about the si-5 crew when they first came in--i was actually annoyed and expected to hate them all, which is a risk you run when you introduce a bunch of new, influential characters so late in a story. they made it work so well. first i came around to maxwell, then jacobi, and finally (tbh it was his swan song) i was like, okay, kepler was a great character. they made him sympathetic without trying to retcon anything to force me to pity him or think he’d been good all along or anything. cutter and pryce were less human, so their redeeming qualities came more from being interesting. i think the voice acting plays a lot into this--cutter just on paper wouldn’t be half as fun

really impressed with how this same thing played out with lovelace--she went from this sort of mythic, predeceased character, to an antagonist, and finally to being such a central character to the crew that you could hardly imagine them without her. poor writing could have easily made her kind of character unlikable. i think characters like her often get short-changed and written as one-note action hero types who crash in and upend the narrative just to give the plot steam and provide friction. instead, she’s as fully fleshed out as the main characters, and seamlessly becomes one of them.

rip plant monster...i loved you :,(

so, the antagonists were multifaceted, and so were the protags. this could have also easily been sloppy. with eiffel especially, lazy writing would have made the reveal of his backstory super cheap, out of left field, and made you feel like you never knew him at all and leave you unable to reconnect. instead of going the route where the writer for some reason thinks they have to make their plucky protag gritty, the reveal of eiffel’s backstory doesn’t change him at all--and why should it? it’s his backstory--it already happened. instead, it only forces him and minkowski to have conversations they probably needed to have anyway, and fleshes out the reason he’s even there in the first place. on this note, it’s not ultimately his backstory that eiffel has to confront within the story as a major flaw--the backstory was a mistake in the past he’s been dealing with for years by the time we meet him. i love what they chose to do instead so much more: what he had to deal with was his current, present day behavior--how he effortlessly disrespects and belittles the people closest to him without even trying. the key there is, without trying--he has to make a decision to start. (”that’s the thing about you, eiffel--you try. you try really, really hard, and then--you stop trying” that was such a good interaction...god.) i could go on and on about how this was such a satisfying tack to take but i’m trying to cut it down. glib bastards like eiffel are so often a sort of male wish-fulfillment character where they get to say whatever the fuck they want without consequence, be lazy, be careless, and still come out on top, and still seem lovable, because hey, he’s funny. eiffel doesn’t get off that easily, and he’s a much better character for it, and so are all the others, for actually demanding better for themselves, because they know they deserve it, and because they all actually care about each other, so when they confront him, he doesn’t just shrug it off--he tries. (it takes him a minute. but he tries.)

hera broke my heart a million times i love her so much. she had so many complex inner conflicts that weren’t just boiled down to some dumbass bs like “boo hoo am i human.” her personhood is a given for the sorts of conflicts she has, as far as feeling inadequate, feeling unappreciated, like an imposter or a less-valued member of the crew. her and minkowski arguing was excellent and allowed them both a chance to be childish because hey, eiffel shouldn’t have the monopoly on that.

death was a serious thing. human life was highly valued, and its loss was never made light of. not even for antagonists (kepler, hilbert) or, in the most extreme case, pryce, who eiffel chose to make a sacrifice to defeat rather than just kill her, the one principle aside from doing as little work as possible he stood his ground on the entire story. team what’s wrong with handcuffs indeed...i just really loved that the main lead was a pacifist and that this line of thinking held sway in the narrative. it was really refreshing (i don’t think it should be--there’s just a lot of bad writing out there especially when things edge into the action genre) to see this stance on nonviolent conflict resolution wherever possible, because yeah, most people have a really hard time ending another person’s life...no shit. minkowski makes that call and deals with the fallout for the rest of the show--she’s not done dealing with it by the end, it’s going to be something she takes with her. sometimes eiffel’s passivity was depicted as a weakness, but he ultimately did diffuse a lot of situations and gave other characters the space to consider their options. i do think that sometimes the narrative’s insistence on eiffel’s dual pacifism/incompetence shifted the burden of action onto minkowski and lovelace and i’m not sure how i feel about that. i think where i’d have to look is comparing how pryce and cutter are dealt with--yeah, im willing to buy that minkowski wasn’t willing to trade all of her memories so that she wouldn’t have to kill cutter. but was she the one who had to have a body count as a conscious narrative choice, or were we just determined to maintain eiffel’s status as the sort of goofy, “innocent” one? or was that something minkowski was determined to preserve--because that’d be really sad and complicated and say way more about her than it would about him.

dear listeners. i loved everything about the dear listeners. it was everything i ever wanted from aliens trope-wise.

didn’t really get the total significance of surrogates or decima virus. those were the only two things that felt sort of hasty because the stakes suddenly went from “the lives on this space station” to “life on earth as we know it.” but apocalypse averted so whatever, the aliens just want music

i am conflicted about the fucking. amnesia. memory was SO important throughout, and questions of identity and personhood, and this is the only reason that amnesia ending didn’t enrage me. if i think about it more i’m sure there will be a lot to unpack with what’s being implied here

this has gotten REALLY long so im going to stop now and finish mindlessly entering data into excel. in short: i loved it