Doug and Hera from the Wolf 359 podcast for @commsroom 🩵

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doug eiffel smoking like that one picture of ben affleck dot jpeg (thank you @kalidels!!)

Hera from Wolf 359! (I couldn't just stick with one design, come on.)

Anyways, not to get personal on my fandom tumblr, but Hera Wolf 359's glitchy voice and the way it was addressed in the series is probably the only time I've actually felt represented by a fictional character as someone who's dealt with a speech impediment for most of my life. IDC if it was intentional or not, I love her for it.

the u.s.s. horrible unending nightmare 💥 (once again from the incredible @hehearse)

i posted that out-of-context clip of michelle agresti saying maxwell "would definitely be a chaser" because i think it's kinda darkly funny, but... i actually kind of do believe that? in a certain capacity. even just socially, maxwell is interested in hera because she's an AI. she's not interested in getting to know hera, the regular woman with regular interests and desires; she's interested in getting to know how hera, mother program of the u.s.s. hephaestus, operates. that isn't to say she isn't interested in hera's personality at all, as a blanket statement, but i am saying that she wouldn't be interested if not for the initial, crucial fact of hera being an AI. that's it. and i know it's probably controversial to say, but i can never personally see maxwell as a trans woman because she is very aware that she's seen as a bright, bubbly young woman - and granted a certain assumption of innocence based on that, in spite of other potential red flags - and she actively uses that to her strategic advantage. hera empathizes with maxwell and believes they share a comradery that maxwell does not return. even before the worst of it - maxwell never respects hera's privacy, and frames her self-defense precautions in a way that's meant to make the others assume she's a danger. there's something about who is granted that assumption of innocence, whose ability to defend herself the same as anyone else is perceived as an act of aggression, that really puts the final nail in the coffin for me.

last time i was talking about eiffel's favorite holidays, i didn't consider april fool's day, and that was a grave oversight because not only does he consider it a holiday, it is one of the holidays to him. between "unbelievable. the first time in three months we've had, like, downtime and i can't think of a single way to prank everyone else. me! the master of the prank!" and the time he hid a randomized buzzer in minkowski's quarters (and made a bet with hera to see how long it'd take her to find it), and his lame attempts to scare lovelace in the hiccups method... that guy is a menace. eiffel would be so, so annoying on april fool's day. it's one of the few things he actually plans for in advance, and he still forgets like 80% of the stuff he sets up until his own pranks backfire on him, sometimes days later. and he's so bad at lying that even when he does remember, he looks too eager and hangs around expectantly and everyone else can recognize he's waiting for them to fall for his trap. and on top of that, minkowski knows a thing or two about traps, and every year she'll disarm one of eiffel's and then set it back up so it'll get him when he checks to see why it didn't work. this happens every year. eiffel still thinks he's a genius.

regarding hera's self image (especially within a trans reading), i think it's interesting to consider that her internal self is kind of, by nature, both idealized and flexible in a way that a physical body would not be, even if she's unaware of the extent of that and trying to be realistic. features, style, the way her hair falls, the way she moves - she's built up this image of herself, and i think it's a reasonable fear, in the context of hera getting a body, and the broader context of that as a partial metaphor for transition, to feel like... what if i go through all of this and i don't look the way i want to? what if i still don't look like me? i would hate for hera to resemble pryce, because hera would hate to resemble pryce, but i think that's also a real fear: will she need to have similar eyes? will she need to have some similar features, in order to keep her voice (and, despite everything, i do think hera would want to keep her voice)? etc. it's crucial to me that, whatever the outcome, having a body is the right choice for hera, that it's worth it, and that her fears are (mostly, in the big ways) unfounded, but i think these are questions that resonate with the experience of transition. so much of it is about seeing and being seen, and this constant negotiation between the parts of ourselves we can choose, and the parts we can't; i think that aligns with hera's overall character arc.

hera wolf 359 is the most trans woman character of all time. it’s the way she’s treated as a woman implicitly - that people have those expectations for her in terms of roles and affectations - but not a real woman, always with the caveat she’s a different category of person. that she is canonically deadnamed and de-gendered as a form of control. the general distrust she feels, fear that respect for her identity is insincere and/or that it can be revoked at any time, if she’s too disagreeable. that she is reflective about her identity and place in the world to an agonizing degree, in a way even the other marginalized people around her aren’t quite, not in the same way, because it feels like all she can control. that she has an internal self-image, cultivated inwardly and maybe not even knowingly, even while she is under the impression no one will ever be able to see her, and that being seen in the way she exists in her own subjective memory is pivotal to some of the biggest moments in her character arc… that she feels this physical loneliness and this seemingly insurmountable gap between the way others perceive her and the way she thinks of herself. and most importantly, that the ways she feels different, the things she feels make her fundamentally doomed… so much of that is just not true and falls away during the course of the show…

they need to stop making mother programs woke!!!

"such a big, big universe, and you only ever gave yourself the tools to think about a tiny portion of it" is such a striking line because at its core it is - like everything in am i alone now? - about loneliness.

i think a lot about the writers saying that eiffel tends to drive conversation in a scene, while hera more often resists it - that eiffel is defined more by what he says, and hera is defined more by what she doesn't say. eiffel is good at getting hera to open up, but he can take things at face value, and really listening to hera means he needs to learn what she says isn't all of what she means. she has to navigate both vocal restrictions and social barriers that he does not.

and hera's monologue in am i alone now? lives at the heart of what she can't say. it's this contrast of emotions between the connection she desires and the isolation she feels doomed to. the frustration that she's always there, but equally feels she's never really anywhere. she wonders aloud if she'd miss eiffel, but she doesn't really wonder. she's rationalizing her loneliness, current and dreaded future, but she knows - when she talks to nobody, she's talking to him. she observes the last gasp of a distant star, and her thought is of him; she watches a solar storm, and wishes she could describe it to him in a way he could understand. she calls him doug.

the irony, of course, is that hera's perspective is also very small and very personal, and that her desire is not to understand more of the universe, but for her part of the universe to be understood. the idea of giving names to colors no one else can see is a powerful metaphor when taken in the context of being surrounded by people who, even if they care, fundamentally cannot understand what it's like to navigate the world as a person like you. and i think there's something equalizing (and humanizing) in acknowledging that every person's experience is individual and subjective, and that all communication is just an attempt to bridge the gap.

so i don't think it's an appeal to the big picture, or even so much a statement of wonder, as much as it is an expression of a very simple, very human desire: i wish you were really listening to me. i wish you could see the world as i see it.

various doodles as i try to come up with designs for hephaestus crew

mother program 🛰️ (by @rosenkranz-does-things)