#firstofficerrose

[vincentbriggs]

@firstofficerrose replied to your post “Hot damn free motion quilting is fun! Why hadn't I...”:

Oh! Vincent! You have that old White treadle machine, right? I saw a video of a guy doing FMQ on a similar model a while ago when I was learning to fix up my own White treadle. You wanna see?

​I think I saw the same video! The one where he said he made the foot himself because they aren't available for White treadles?

My free motion foot is for my Singer 15-91, and it's working just fine. I also have one for my Pfaff 360 which I have not tried yet, because I still need to get around to un-gunking the rest of the insides so that it can stitch normally instead of only doing a tiny shitty zig zag. But that machine does have drop feed, and a more sensitive speed control, so I think it'll be better for quilting than the Singer.

[camlannpod]

Hey, if there was someone named James T Kirk in the Camlann apocalypse, would he be able to shoot phasers out of kit bashed hair dryers? What about a Clark Kent? Could he fly? How does the Camlann apocalypse interact with modern myths as opposed to oral traditions?

Hi! So there's an in-universe answer and an out-of-universe answer. In-universe, our gang doesn't know the answer to this question. Telecommunications went down in the first nine days, and stories by their nature are often contradictory, so our gang just don't know enough yet about how this all works to know what it does and doesn't apply to.

Out-of-universe, which is to say the way I write it (and likely something that won't come up explicitly in the show) - the stories have to have been told for the first time orally. They have to be part of an oral tradition that involves many creators and many listeners. The more tellers, listeners and permutations of the story, the more powerful it is. The age of the stories also makes them more powerful, as does their connection to 'the land' - wherever they were first told. They also have to be...organic? They have to have been told for the sake of telling them, not specifically made as a product to be sold.

By all of these rules, anything that was written for a paycheque is pretty much out - which rules out Star Trek and Superman. You can draw a lot of parallels between modern fiction and mythology, for sure, but they do fundamentally serve different purposes and were created for different reasons. A lot of heart and politics went into the creation of Superman, not least combating the rise of fascism. However, he was also created in the first place to sell comic books.

Modern myths that might work better are urban legends - especially older ones that find their roots in the late 1800s or early 1900s. American rural stories about strangers on the road etc. But in that example, again, the age of the story and its connection to the land is always the most important factor. This means that in the US, for example, indigenous folklore and stories are always more powerful than more modern settler ghost stories, and in figurative or literal conflict, the indigenous stories are going to win the toss. Which means that you're a lot less likely to find a creepypasta type creature unless you're in an area that's isolated from any indigenous cultures. Which is obviously going to be hard to find.

*Finally, a note on religion: I do not feel comfortable playing games with real people's real faiths, which is a big part of why we're largely steering clear of religions and religious stories. There's a grey area where religious figures that have also become folk heroes can come into play, specifically leaning on the power they have from folk legend - so Santa, Joan of Arc etc. As a white British woman, I don't feel I have the authority to tell those stories for other cultures. One day I'd love to have a series of mini-episodes where we invite writers from around the world to tackle these subjects. But I'm not going to be the one who writes those stories, because they're not mine to tell.

[specialagentartemis]

Trick or treat!

I give you: an underrated sci-fi audio drama miniseries, Roguemaker!

Based on a discord-based RPG a friend of mine participated in, Roguemaker is a single-season complete story about a passenger spaceflight to an interstellar music festival... that gets hijacked and bombed. The passengers all escape into escape pods, and land on a planet that shouldn't exist. A locked-room mystery of a sense, the characters have to determine: who set the bomb? What were they after? And what does it have to do with this sunless planet that they conveniently happened to be nearby enough to land on?

Cool characters and a fun mystery! Though sometimes the audio is tough to understand :')

[marzipanandminutiae]

Late to the (birthday) party, but I hope you've had a great day! Happy birthday!

Thank you so much! I have indeed.

[goingtoweather]

Have you heard the 528th episode of 99 Percent Invisible? It's on the industrial implications of whale oil and features an interview with the daughter of a whaler.

T'was mentioned to me once before! I haven't listened yet, though. I tend to have a hard time listening to podcasts, but perhaps I'll check it out at some point!

[rebloggingrexan]

So... the Count has a perfect mustache, but cannot see himself in the mirror (foul bauble of man's vanity!). How does he shave?

[clansocreations]

@firstofficerrose @bekabloodhound

(I had a moment. 😂

Although actually now that I think about it....he not only assassinated one but two of the people who came before him.)

Anyways, I wish good luck and good life insurance to the people who wanna try anything like overthrowing the government.

They'll need it

[toribookworm22]

First Lines Tag

Thanks @thedahliafrog @artcoffeecats @talesofsorrowandofruin @axl-ul @akiwitch @acertainmoshke @drabbleitout @sam-glade @primroseprime2019 & @oh-no-another-idea for all the first line related tags!

No pressure tagging: @ddbirb @firstofficerrose @kae-luna @ladywithalamp & my open tag!

Have the first line of Chapter 10 of the second book of my Secondary Series:

Whatever Imre poisoned me with is strong, nasty enough that the first time I take a swing at someone, I also throw up in my mouth.

[camlannpod]

Odyssey? Odyssey??? ODYSSEY!?!?!?

HI YES THAT'S CORRECT

[specialagentartemis]

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, for the sci fi book ask game?

For the Modern/Classic Sci-Fi Ask Game

Would Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990) be too on the nose? Even if you’ve seen the movie, the book is really good: it’s easily one of my favorite books, movies, and book-to-movie adaptations. Certainly not lesser known at any rate.

Also a similar vibe, also by Michael Crichton, Congo (1980) is a “lost world” adventure story to the African rainforest featuring a desperate race against an evil corporation, a sign language-speaking gorilla, and mysterious creatures in the jungle. However, it is, uh, noticeably dated, and has weirdly racist depictions of a fictional African indigenous tribe.

A fun and weird and fast paced adventure with sailing ships, nuclear war in the far past, and a weird post-nuclear radiation altered fantasy world that’s actually sci-fi, full of mutants and sufficiently advanced but since lost high-tech “magic” as was a popular thing in the 1960s, you also might have fun with The Jewels of Aptor by Samuel Delany (1962). It has that "two worlds" feel where one is Normal and one is full of Strange Creatures and multiple factions want what's there.

[pasitheapowder]

Hello, I would just like to say that I found the show yesterday and episode 10 has me emotionally devastated. Incredible job. Thank you.

You are extremely welcome!

[clansocreations]

@firstofficerrose I get it I get it. I did it to my dad. (And also I think to @bekabloodhound hehe. And I'm also working on doing it to one of my DND mates.)

Last week Monday he had to go on a seven hour train ride for work and I recommended him Raising Steam, the discworld book about trains. And engineers.

(my dad loves that stuff)

And when he came back on Tuesday I waited in the cold for close to an hour just so we could walk home together and talk about it. And we talked about it the entire way home and then even when we were home. I told him stuff about it and he asked me stuff about it.

It was great, actually.

I've been planning to convince my dad to listen since I've first read it myself. (We have a really similar sense of humor, so I basically knew he'd love it even though it's not what he usually listens to.)

And it worked! The plan worked!

The plan worked!!

So yeah, I get it.

[toribookworm22]

Heads Up Seven Up (x2) (ish)

Thank you @pure-solomon & @akiwitch for the tags!

No pressure tagging: @minutiaewriter @jamieanovels @winterandwords @authorlaurawinter @inkskinned @mschvs @lockejhaven @pluttskutt @raiphend @tlbodine @rottenbury @writeintrees @firstofficerrose & my open tag!

From that random polyam idea I had that I accidentally went and turned into a short story. (That I may or may not have used for a class. 🤭)

As much as it pained me to admit-- and probably will for at least a little while longer-- we couldn’t be everything to each other. We were good. We are good. We are so good, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be better.

“How would you feel about coming over to mine for ice cream after this?” Wynn tips their head to the side, intrigued. “It was our back up plan if this went badly, but I happen to have a great selection of flavors in my freezer and plenty of bowls.”

I can feel the void shrink as Wynn smiles. “I’d love to. Thank you.”

Just barely, I glance at Ruth. Her eyes shimmer both with unshed tears and the strongest most unfiltered kind of love that is always always enough for me.

I serve her a slice with extra cheese. Before I can pull my hand away, she catches it and raises it to her lips, staining my knuckles with the faintest of green.

Wynn hands her a napkin.

I don’t even know what we’re going to do with more love. Guess we’ll find out.

[mongeese]

Morality in Wolf 359

A month ago, I made this post about how Wolf 359 doesn’t have any good or bad characters, just people making choices. I also said I’d write a full-length essay about this topic. Well, here’s the essay! Be warned, it’s a hefty 2400 words, because I wanted to be thorough. If you don’t want to read all that, here’s a TL,DR.

People who were interested in reading this: @commsroom, @a-side-character, @firstofficerrose, @afrogsmoraldilemma

Now without further ado, the essay, below the read more.

Wolf 359 is fantastic for many, many reasons, one of the most prominent being its amazing cast of characters. The podcast is practically a masterclass in interesting and nuanced character development, and a huge contributing factor to this is the continual subversion of the hero and villain labels. As Wolf 359 continues into the later seasons, it becomes obvious that while these roles exist in the narrative to an extent, they are not nearly as black and white as we would expect. There simply aren’t “good” or “bad” people of Wolf 359; there’s just people, making decisions, and those decisions can either hurt people or help people.

Wolf 359 is an utterly unpredictable and insane story, with constant (and might I add, incredible) plot twists. There is, however, at least one predictable cycle, which I like to call the “villain escalation”. Basically, the previous “bad guy” gets replaced by another, even bigger threat, which demotes the old villain to “morally grey supporting character”. The new threat forces our main protagonists to cooperate with the old threat, leaving room for the old “bad guy” to change their behavior and develop more complex relationships with both the other characters and the audience. Now, this isn’t the only way Wolf 359 removes the hero/villain labels from the equation, but it’s one of the most prominent. By my count, it happens 3 times over the course of the podcast, though that could be extended to 4 or even 5 depending on how you classify a “new threat”.

The first subject of villain escalation is Dr. Alexander Hilbert/Elias Selberg/Dmitri Volodin, caused by Captain Isabel Lovelace. Hilbert starts as such a stereotypical villain it’s almost comical. I mean, the evil Russian scientist is manipulating our heroes and performing unethical experiments on them; it can’t get much more stereotypical than that. Then Lovelace comes aboard, and suddenly he’s an ally against her. It’s a very uneasy alliance to be sure, but an alliance nonetheless. (Note that Eiffel and Minkowski do accept help from Hilbert before Lovelace arrives, but it’s mostly done by force, and the real turning point in the perception of his character occurs after she comes to the station.) Through this alliance, we learn more about Hilbert: his past, his motivations, his personality. He’s brutal sometimes, yes, and cruel, and externally callous. But he is also motivated by a genuine desire to save people. He had a family, a sister, who fell victim to radiation poisoning, which inspired him to pursue science and push further. When Eiffel is sick, he does everything he can to save him. He repeats over and over again that he did the things he did out of a sincere desire to make the world a better place. Dmitri Volodin is not just an evil monster, and for most of the podcast, he’s on the side of the “heroes”. This pushes the audience and even some of the main characters to start genuinely caring for him, to some extent.

Crucially, though, this does not absolve him. Hilbert may not have been causing pain and death just for the fun of it, but still he did cause pain and death. And it’s all for nothing, anyway, because the Decima experiment is a failure, but even if we ignore that fact, what he did was unjustifiable. (We shouldn’t ignore that failure, btw, but that’s a topic for another essay.) It doesn’t matter what “greater good” he was working toward – he committed atrocities, and there’s no justifying that. And none of the people he has wronged ever forgive him. They work with him, they talk to him, even protect him if necessary, but forgiveness is never considered. Alexander Hilbert, while maybe not a bad person, is certainly not a good person. Even after his death, he doesn’t get to be redeemed.

I said before that this development comes as a result of the villain escalation, from Hilbert to Lovelace. That’s true, considering how I defined villain escalation, but it’s important to clarify that Lovelace was never an outright villain, instead existing as a morally grey character from her first introduction. She absolutely and seriously threatens all the main characters, making it very obvious that she will hurt them if she needs to in order to reach her goal. But at the same time, she’s their best shot at making it off the Hephaestus alive. It’s also clear that that Lovelace’s aggression, paranoia, and callousness comes from a place of trauma, and that despite her harsh exterior and frequent threats, she does want to get everyone out of this situation alive. She cares about them, in her own way. Really, I think her character in season 2 can be summed up by two occurrences. In episode 26, she saves Doug Eiffel’s life, on purpose, with her blood donation, but in episode 28, she very nearly kills him, on accident, with her explosive rig. She wants to save people, but her paranoia and rage makes it so that she hurts people instead. And just as it was with Hilbert, her trauma is not an excuse. What matters most is whether she helps the people around her or harms them, and in season 2, she does both in equal measure.

We also see an interesting dimension of morality in the interactions between Hilbert/Selbert. The worst of Lovelace comes out when she’s with him. He’s the one who killed most of her crew, so she wants revenge on him personally almost as much as she wants revenge on Goddard Futuristics. In seeking revenge, she becomes her worst self. She gets violent, self-centered, becoming willing to hurt any number of people to reach her goal, in a way that is explicitly portrayed as a foil for Hilbert’s obsession with the Decima virus. It’s interesting, because when you compare them, the more “villainous” character, Hilbert, has significantly more noble intentions. Potentially saving lives with a revolutionary medical treatment is a lot more moral than tearing down the people who hurt you. And yet Hilbert is not more moral than Lovelace. This shows that intention is not as important as the effect you have on the people around you. It also shows how goodness is not innate, because Lovelace and Hilbert are quite similar in a lot of ways; they’re both consistently down with murder, for one, but there’s more subtle similarities as well. Thus the reason Lovelace is placed closer to the “good” end of the spectrum by the narrative can’t be because of some inherent morality. Instead, it must be because over the course of her life she has helped people more often than she has hurt them. Hilbert, on the other hand, has hurt much more often than he’s helped. Their day to day actions and decisions are what give them their moral statuses and roles in the narrative, not some designated classification of being a good or a bad person – both of them aren’t either.

The 2nd instance of villain escalation comes when the SI-5 board the station. At this point, we’ve been somewhat primed to view characters in moral shades of grey, but it’s still pretty obvious that they’re “bad guys”. There are repeated references to atrocities the SI-5 have committed, and they never let the main characters forget that they are in charge and that they would do terrible things to them if the situation calls for it. They’re opposite Lovelace, in a way, in that they are externally friendly, pleasant, and helpful, while being internally willing to harm any number of people. But still they’re human. Still they don’t deserve to be murdered, as Eiffel repeatedly reminds everyone.

The SI-5 members claim, as Hilbert did, to be working on behalf of a greater good that’s worth plenty of immoral actions (though to be honest, I’m doubtful how much they really believed that and how much they convinced themselves of it just because they liked being a part of something. But that’s a topic for another day). And as with Hilbert, this is not a justification. It’s more of the same, really. Maxwell cares for and helps Hera, but she still violates her autonomy in a pretty brutal way. Jacobi breaks after the mutiny, and in his brokenness becomes sympathetic, but still is not a completely good person. Then the 3rd and final villain escalation, the arrival of Cutter and Pryce, push both Jacobi and Kepler to make the decision to do the right thing and help the people around them. It’s not that any of them become good or become bad as things progress, or even that they were good or bad in the first place. They always had the capacity to do good things, we just didn’t see much of that side until the stakes got high enough. Their character shows in the decisions they make and the sides they choose to stand on.

Villain escalation is not the only way Wolf 359 flips the script on “hero” and “villain” roles. It also shows us that the protagonists, the “good guys”, can do bad things, and those bad things aren’t justified just because the people are good. Minkowski and Hera are lesser examples of this. Both of them hurt people: Hera tries to kill crew members multiple times and often lets her anger get the better of her, while Minkowski occasionally advocates for murder and actually does kill Maxwell. Minkowski also can hurt the people she cares about in a misguided attempt at leadership, such as when she sends Eiffel away in the finale. But again, these examples are relatively minor, though they are a further illustration of the fact that even seemingly good people can cause harm. The biggest subversion comes from Doug Eiffel.

For the first half of the podcast, Eiffel is portrayed as a semi-irresponsible goofball, who can be a bit of an ass but who is at worst harmless, and at best a resourceful and honorable man. This character assessment doesn’t stop being true, exactly. However, after about 40 episodes, we learn that he is also a man who ruined lives, for completely selfish and destructive reasons. That’s not something you can just overlook, or forgive. Once again, there’s no justification or absolution, even though Eiffel was at rock bottom and struggling with addiction. He did something awful, full stop, and our previous perception of him as a good person is flipped completely on its head.

Eiffel’s also shown to be a bit of a shithead even in the present day, on the Hephaestus. He commits microaggressions frequently as discussed in episode 51, “Shut Up and Listen”, and when confronted with this, he goes sullen and withdrawn. The harm there was unintentional, but it’s treated as just as real and damaging as all the other crazy threats the crew faces. This is a unique case, because Eiffel is actually forgiven by the people he’s wronged (Minkowski, Hera, and Lovelace), but that forgiveness comes because he made a tangible effort to do better, not because “he’s a good guy at heart” or some similar BS. All this is to say, Doug Eiffel isn’t necessarily a good person. He does good things and he does awful things, but because he makes the decision over and over to be helpful, and moral, and better, he is someone that the audience can root for.

I hope by now I’ve fully convinced you that Wolf 359 does not have any heroes or villains, merely people who are working with what circumstances they have, making decisions to either help those around them or harm them. This is a fairly radical position for a piece of media to have, with clear implications for the justice system and punishment. Wolf 359 doesn’t hesitate to explore those implications, either. It is extremely obvious that killing people, even if those people pose a threat to you, even if those people are seemingly reprehensible, is always immoral. The “villains” are kept alive whenever possible, and in those moments where they are killed, it is never a victory, always a tragedy. Mr. Cutter might be an exception, though I imagine Minkowski will still struggle post-canon with the fact that she took his life. That has interesting implications in the anti-capitalist part of the show’s messaging, as it implies that once someone causes a certain level of harm (as billionaires do), killing them becomes the lesser of two evils despite not being a moral act in and of itself. But honestly, I don’t feel equipped to unpack that right now. I will just say, that Wolf 359 wholeheartedly condemns capital punishment, which is of course a necessary consequence of the idea that people are not fully good or bad. You cannot kill only the bad people, because there are no bad people. Therefore capital punishment is just murder, and it cannot be justified.

I also really appreciate this position because it’s distinctly different from a redemption arc. No one is redeemed for their past. Hell, most of them don’t even apologize for their past behavior. They just start doing better. That’s a level of nuance I’ve almost never seen, and it offers fascinating commentary on the ideas of restorative justice. Wolf 359 tells us that even people who do awful, unforgiveable things can do better. No one is in a fixed moral position, and everyone is shaped by their circumstances. But importantly, this does not mean that you have to forgive anyone! You can rehabilitate, work with, and respect people while still recognizing the atrocities in their past, and while still withholding forgiveness. It’s a remarkable endorsement for restorative justice and a really important viewpoint to consider.

In conclusion: Wolf 359 is a fucking amazing podcast, guys. The writing is masterful, and it is incredibly fun and emotional, while also providing a cutting criticism of the current capitalist global system. In regards to morality and justice, it refutes the idea that people are internally “good” or “bad”, instead recognizing that everyone is just a person who does good and bad things, and the balance of these actions can change over a person’s life. This leads to a subtextual endorsement for restorative justice that is very radical (both in the leftist sense and in the cool sense). Overall, it’s a fascinating analysis of human nature and an excellent commentary on how we treat others. I love it so so so much.

[camlannpod]

I got a friend of mine to listen to the show and we're currently both caught up and we have a (metaphorical) red string board going on. We're doing Wikipedia dives on Arthurian myth and Welsh naming conventions. "King Arthur a messed up bear?" is written in red pen and circled. We're having a great time, thank you for the show!

Oh this is beautiful this exactly what I wanted. YEEEEES get out the red string theorize!!!!! There are a couple of things that happen in the show that will mean more if you know your Arthuriana - one really big plot point was just hinted at in episode 2!

I'm so so glad you're both enjoying it, thank you for listening and for telling a friend (and please say thank you to your friend on our behalf!)

[specialagentartemis]

Have you read A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes?

I haven’t! It is definitely on my list of books on my radar that I want to check out though.

Have you? What do you think about it?