#ironically reading minkowski this way makes me like her WAY better

[crossguild]

had a conversation that actually made me sit up and pay attention to minkowski, who i always liked and appreciated but honestly never particularly pinged my interest, since she has largely presented herself as a person who likes to follow rules, who is reasonable, and whose moments of absolute batshittery are framed by her as moments of desperation, actions she was forced to take against her will. self-doubt and insecurity aren't compelling traits in characters to me

and, since i'm not immune to an unreliable narrator, i fell for it

i've seen some meta about how the si-5 lost in the mutiny confrontation because kepler screwed up and made mistakes, which is true to the extent that his mistake was assuming he was dealing with a reasonable person in minkowski! which really IS a mistake. he had logs! why would anyone who heard hephaestus crew logs assume she was any more normal than eiffel or hera or hilbert??

but either way i really think that interpretation is a huge disservice to the resourcefulness of the hephaestus crew, who won because they were unpredictable, because they grew beyond the people that kepler heard in the logs that he doubtlessly studied, but i digress

kepler backed down when minkowski threatened to drop the station, because he had just heard her shoot maxwell, another thing he was convinced she wouldn't do. (incidentally, which is why it's funny that in brand new world when cutter & co were convinced that eiffel would never ram the station, kepler was the first to acknowledge that oh yes, he would, because he is by now intimately familiar with how deeply UNreasonable the hephaestus crew is)

and that's… kind of their strength! minkowski believes herself to be and has always presented herself as someone who follows rules, who is diligent and reasonable, but a reasonable person doesn't turn a room's temp to 40 degrees to recover a single tube of toothpaste. she could've just ignored eiffel, eiffel-proofed their other supplies, and eiffel's need for attention would've won out. a reasonable person doesn't choose to drop a station into a star. a reasonable person doesn't hunt a plant monster for weeks. a reasonable person doesn't gas their crewmates just because they're insufferable. a reasonable person doesn't resort immediately to escalation 100% of the time and try to justify them. like ma'am, there were so many other options

her narrative of becoming someone who embraces how batshit and unpredictable she is & using it to get one over on goddard management is the BEST, because i love a character who is deliberate and intentional about their actions. and part of her learning to be a better, more effective leader is leaning into her strengths, and part of that strength is in being stubborn to the point of irrationality. everyone else is playing chess; minkowski is kicking over the table

thanks @ hazel who wisely doesnt use tumblr for hashing this out, i had a ton of fun 😂