#which is the stuff I perceive as like

[milkyplier]

Some character sketches

[transmechanicus]

I know some people have unfathomable beef with the term but i really don’t see the issue with transmascs describing their specific experiences with societal mistreatment and persecution as “transandrophobia”, like i think it’s good to be able to discuss specific experiences and articulate the problems you’re facing actually.

[aliusfrater]

for the life of me i cannot figure out why people are so desperate to apply a version of dean's facade to sam

[hephaestuscrew]

"With a goddamn harpoon": The significance of Minkowski's weapon of choice within the narrative and characterisation of Wolf 359

TL;DR: Despite its initial comic role, the harpoon becomes a important symbol of Minkowski as a character; it is particularly associated with her desperate need for control, her desire to keep her crew safe, her stubborn determination, and her occasional unpredictability. These associations add to the narrative significance when Minkowski kills Cutter with the harpoon. 

[Tagging people who said they wanted to be tagged: @browncoatparadox @captain-lovelace @goblincaveofvibes ]

~~~

Ep21 Minkowski Commanding

First appearance 

We first encounter the harpoon in Minkowski Commanding, which is a significant episode for Minkowski's characterisation because it's the first big departure from Eiffel's point-of-view into Minkowski's. It's arguably the most Minkowski-centred episode in the whole show, so it stands out when we think about her as a character.

EIFFEL (over comm) Um, Minkowski? Why is the armory wide open, and also, apparently, robbed? Where's the tactical knives kit? MINKOWSKI Don't worry. I've got that. EIFFEL Oh. And the M4 carbine? The, like, really-dangerous-in-space, select-fire M4 carbine? MINKOWSKI Yeah, I've got that too. EIFFEL And this empty rack I'm looking at right now with a label that says "harpoon" suggests that... MINKOWSKI Yes. I have it, Eiffel.

The harpoon is introduced as part of a list of over-the-top weapons that Minkowski takes on her plant-monster-hunting mission. It's initially just a funny moment to emphasise how seriously she's taking this mission. The weapons arguably increase in unlikeliness as Eiffel lists them, and it's a comic image to think of Eiffel deducing the situation from the empty rack labeled 'harpoon'. It could have been an entirely throw-away joke that was never brought up again. The M4 carbine never comes up again. The tactical knives kit is mentioned in Knock, Knock, but not in a plot-significant or symbolic way. 

'Goddamn harpoon' speech

So why does the harpoon become such an iconic part of Minkowski's brand (and I'm pretty certain it was seen as significant by fans long before the finale)? It's got to be because of the next time it's mentioned, when Minkowski talks to the plant monster in the same episode:

MINKOWSKI (getting psyched up) You wanna play with me, huh? You wanna run rings around me? The joyless, boring, predictable old Minkowski? She can't stop you, right? Not someone as smart and powerful as you. You've got her pegged. Good. Get complacent. Get smug. That's right when you'll find me waiting for you. With a goddamn harpoon.

There's so much to say about this speech and what it reveals her character. For one thing, it's all projection - we have no real indication of what (if anything) the plant monster thinks of Minkowski. We don't even really know how much understanding it has when listening to her talk. She imagines that this silent adversary would call her "joyless, boring, predictable". I suspect that these are all things that she's been called a fair bit in the past. (To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they are all things that Eiffel called her at one point.)

But the harpoon is proof against - if not the accusation of joylessness - the idea that Minkowski is boring and predictable. Boring and predictable people don't opt for a harpoon for fighting on a spaceship when plenty of more conventional weapons available. A harpoon is unexpected, and there's a kind of power in that.

Another interesting thing about that speech is that the whole thing would make at least as much sense - if not more - if it was directed at Cutter. In Sarah Shachat's episode commentary on Minkowski Commanding (part of the bonus material available to buy here), she says that Minkowski "is really speaking to Cutter in this moment". It's made clear that Minkowski's behaviour in Minkowski Commanding is not just about the plant monster itself. She tells Eiffel, "I have to take it seriously! If I can eliminate one threat, just one, then we are that much closer to going home!" 

The specifics of the plant monster's location, abilities, and origin are mysterious, but - unlike many of the other forces threatening the safety of Minkowski's crew - it is at least tangible and harpoon-able and not light years away. Hunting the plant monster is a way for Minkowski to assert control when so much is outside of her control. It's an attempt to demonstrate that she is - as she puts it - "in charge of this disaster". Minkowski treats the plant monster as a physical symbol of all the threats her crew are facing, and so the harpoon becomes a physical symbol of her fierce (if sometimes misguided) determination to take control of the situation and fight back against those threats to protect her crew.

The line "you'll find me waiting for you. With a goddamn harpoon" is one that sticks in the mind, especially since - with one notable exception - 'goddamn' is about as potent as swearwords get on this show. And it's the harpoon that she uses to give specificity to the threat. 

Absurdity

A harpoon is powerful and threatening, which is exactly what Minkowski is trying to convey to the plant monster, but in this context - not only on dry land but on a spaceship - it's also kind of absurd. From the way we hear it fire in the finale, we can tell that it's more like a speargun than a hand-thrown harpoon spear, but it's still an out-of-place weapon for space-based combat. Minkowski's already been shown to have a penchant for archaic weaponry, after her drunken enthusiasm over the cannon during the talent show incident, which is largely played for laughs. Similarly, in the episode commentary for Minkowski Commanding, Sarah Shachat says that the harpoon was introduced mostly just because it was funny; "[including a harpoon] was me sort of embracing the Moby Dick of it all. And I had no idea at the time how much importance that silly harpoon would take on." 

Eiffel makes a Moby Dick reference himself ("10 days of Captain Ahab's Space Walkabout"). I haven't read Moby Dick so I can't properly analyse the significance of this reference, but the initial prominence of the harpoon (traditionally a whaling tool) enables that connection. It feels like a good example of the classic Wolf 359 thing where something comedic has the potential to take on a deeper significance. It conjures an image of Minkowski as a Captain with the potential to be consumed by a single-minded mission to destroy... A potential that she resists in the conclusion to Minkowski Commanding when she chooses to leave the plant monster alone. The harpoon also fits with the sprinkling of nautical imagery and language in Wolf 359 (e.g. the repeated use of the word 'boat'), as well as the retro-futuristic feel of the Hephaestus.

We never learn why there's a harpoon on the Hephaestus. It seems like yet another of those bizarre unexplained quirks of the station, like the items in the storage room where Eiffel finds Box 953. Even when the weird mysterious features of the Hephaestus are depicted in a comedic way, these features are still a demonstration of the fact that the characters are in an environment that they don't understand and that their surroundings have been shaped according to the whims of Command.

I think we can assume none of the members of the Hephaestus crew brought a harpoon up with them. For whatever reason, someone at Goddard Futuristics must have decided to put a harpoon in that armory. Like most things in the crew's lives, the harpoon is owned by Goddard Futuristics. So the way Minkowski uses the harpoon could be seen as an instance of reclaiming something from Goddard and their control over her surroundings (in a similar way to how her crew are able to utilise the maze-like structure of the Hephaestus to their advantage when hiding first from the SI-5 and later from Cutter and the crew of the Sol).

Other mentions of the harpoon

The harpoon doesn't actually make another physical appearance until the finale, when it truly comes into its own. But there are a couple of little hints before then that it has become a part of Minkowski's brand amongst the other characters as well as to the listeners. These mentions remind the listener about the harpoon, so we don't forget about it before its big comeback in the finale.

Ep27 Knock, Knock

EIFFEL [to Minkowski] Like getting rid of all the weapons, for a start. We should gather up all the guns, the tactical knives, your harpoon. Put it all in the arms locker, seal that sucker up, and put the key in one of Hera's service canisters.

In this quote, Eiffel refers to it as "your harpoon" - the only weapon he ascribes ownership to here. He sees it as something she's laid claim to. He also thinks the harpoon is worth mentioning specifically, which suggests that he thinks that Minkowski would reach for it first if she was feeling particularly violent. This reinforces the idea that the harpoon has become a symbol of Minkowski's character. This connection is also strengthened by the fact that the harpoon is also never mentioned in relation to anyone other than Minkowski using it.

Ep45 Desperate Measures

LOVELACE [to Kepler] Yeah, right. Nobody knows this station like Alexander Hilbert. He knows every nook, cranny, hidden room - everything. And as back up he's got the only woman's who's ever turned outer space monster hunting into a recreational sport. You'll never see them coming... until all of a sudden there's a harpoon in your face, and you end up on the operating table of the finest medical sadist that Goddard Futuristics ever produced.

Lovelace mentions the harpoon and specifically refers to Minkowski's plant-hunting exploits, even though she didn't witness them. So we know that someone has told her that story. And what she's taken away from hearing the story is an emphasis on Minkowski's harpoon and an admiration for her determination. I don't think Minkowski was the one to tell Lovelace about her plant-monster-hunting mission, because I don't think she's necessarily proud of it. I suspect it was Eiffel who told her - he's the most natural storyteller of the group. In Mutually Assured Destruction, soon after meeting Lovelace for the first time, he says "Nobody's told you about the Plant Monster yet? So, funny story..." And I believe  Eiffel would have told the story of Minkowski's plant monster hunt in a way that conveyed both the ridiculousness of her behaviour but also a kind of awe at her boldness and persistence.

The tone of "all of a sudden there's a harpoon in your face" is pretty similar to "That's right when you'll find me waiting for you. With a goddamn harpoon". Once again, the harpoon is portrayed as something that the Hephaestus crew's adversary won't expect, something that will play a key role in that adversary's defeat. You might almost think something was being foreshadowed here…

Characterisation through Weaponry

When we think of the harpoon as a symbol of Minkowski as a character, it seems worth drawing a comparison with the only other Wolf 359 character who I think has a form of weaponry as a big part of their brand: Jacobi and his explosives. While a harpoon certainly has a lot of potential for violence (a potential which Minkowski utilises), it is targeted and intentional in a way that bombs don't tend to be. It's harder to have collateral damage with a harpoon, and I think that reflects a difference between Minkowski and Jacobi's approach to conflict.

A harpoon isn't really designed for combat - it's for hunting whales and other marine animals. It feels significant that Minkowski's key weapon of choice - the one she threatens the plant monster with and kills Cutter with - isn't the weapon of a soldier. She took an assault rifle with her to hunt the plant monster, but that wasn't the weapon she held onto. She's not a natural soldier, even if she'd sometimes like to think she is. 

Maxwell's Death

When Minkowski kills Maxwell, it's with a gun, not a harpoon. She's trying to be a soldier there. She's trying to do what she has to. I don't know much about how a harpoon is fired, but I've a feeling that there's less uncertainty about whether a harpoon was fired deliberately than a gun; the ambiguity around Minkowski's agency in Maxwell's death is a key part of the story that wouldn't work with a harpoon. But perhaps more importantly, I don't think there's meant to be a sense of victory or relief in Maxwell's death, unlike Cutter's. The harpoon - as a weapon that has become strongly identified with Minkowski as a character - is saved for moments when Minkowski is asserting her power in an active way that she isn't conflicted about. 

Ep61 Brave New World

About a third of the way into the finale, there's another indirect mention of the harpoon:

RACHEL Y-yes, sir… Umm, we also picked up some chatter on their weaponry supplies… Firearms, explosives, something about a harpoon…

This is a nice little reference which reminds the listener of the harpoon in anticipation of its big moment later on in this episode, while once again playing with its incongruity in a list of more typical combat weapons. Given that Minkowski and co. have guessed that they are being listened in on here, their choice to talk about the harpoon might be seen as their way of having a bit of fun, or it might be seen as their way to imply the same threat that Minkowski made to the plant monster. Cutter had warning, but he didn't heed it.

Which brings us, of course, to the harpoon's most significant moment:

Cutter frowns. Then he hears it: CLA-CLUNK! His eyes widen.  MINKOWSKI Let's see you catch this.  FWUUUMP! An ENORMOUS THING IS SHOT. A moment later, Cutter COLLIDES AGAINST THE WALL, IMPALED.  MR. CUTTER ... a... harpoon? That's not... how this is... supposed... to... He struggles for a few more moments...and then he stops.

This scene is a classic instance of Wolf 359 utilizing the audio medium to leave a significant element of the situation unknown to the listener until the right moment. We don't know that Minkowski is carrying the harpoon. We don't know that she's readying it as Lovelace talks. When we hear something fire, there's a moment where a listener might or might not have realised exactly what just fired. It's Cutter who delivers the glorious revelation. It gives the moment an additional burst of triumph that Cutter's final words are an expression of shock, not just that he has been defeated but at the weapon with which the killing blow was struck.

Human unpredictability 

It's not just that Minkowski kills Cutter with a harpoon; it's also that she wouldn't have been able to kill him without it. He can catch bullets after all, so Minkowski and Lovelace's guns are basically useless. Cutter thinks he's therefore invincible, but he hasn't accounted for the possibility that Minkowski might have a less conventional weapon on hand, one which fires larger projectiles that he can't catch so easily. The fact that she's carrying an unexpected weapon - a weapon that might have seemed ridiculous - is what allows her to defeat Cutter and therefore to survive. 

It's a repeated theme in Wolf 359 that the protagonists' strength is not that they are the most powerful or they behave in the most logical ways, but that they are complicated and human and unpredictable and very much themselves - all of the things that Cutter and Pryce don't want in their 'ideal humanity'. When Minkowski kills Cutter with the harpoon, it's a victory for human unpredictability and individual idiosyncrasies.

Making good on her promise

Thinking back to Minkowski Commanding, we can see that the threat Minkowski made to the plant monster absolutely came true with Cutter. He got complacent. He got smug. (I'd argue that smugness has always been one of his key attributes.) And he found her waiting for him, with a goddamn harpoon. The return of the harpoon for this moment suggests the defeat of Cutter is a culmination of some of the motivations and traits that Minkowski showed when hunting the plant monster, now channeled in a more suitable direction. She continued trying to get them "that much closer to going home". Her - sometimes absurd - determination provides a throughline from an episode that was mostly comedic (Minkowski Commanding) to a dramatic emotionally powerful finale. As Sarah Shachat put it in her audio commentary, Minkowski "makes good on her promise [that she makes in her harpoon speech in Minkowski Commanding]. That's why she's a hero."

It's significant that Cutter dies from an unlikely weapon that is so strongly identified with Minkowski. It makes that moment feel like truly hers (although she is of course right that she couldn't have done it without Lovelace - that's called being part of a crew). 

As the Commander, it feels apt that Minkowski is the one to kill the long-standing 'big bad'. Pryce is arguably the same level of antagonist as Cutter, but he's the one that we've been aware of since we became aware of larger sinister forces at work in this narrative. 

And if Minkowski has a personal nemesis, it's Cutter. He's the one who recruited her into the hellscape that is the Hephaestus. He played on her ambitions to get her where he wanted her. She trusted him the way she trusted the official chain of authority at the start of the mission. And that trust was extremely misplaced.

The significance of Minkowski being the one to kill Cutter is highlighted by the fact that she kills him with a weapon that only she uses, a weapon that links us back to her behaviour 40 episodes earlier. The sense of control that she was desperately seeking in Minkowski Commanding might not be completely within her grasp by the end of the finale, but she's reclaimed a piece of it by defeating the man who has been exerting control over her life for so long. And she did it with that goddamn harpoon.

[sincerely-sofie]

Was bored and rereading TPiaG as I sometimes do

And I read a line about the librarian Swadloon in Verdant village having a crush on Kip, and since I don't Think you have any art of that yet, it was too enticing for me to not ask you to please draw something of them. Please?

You’re right that I haven’t drawn anything of her! Everybody meet Elwood! :>

[archiveofliterature]

anyway i have Thoughts™ about how ramy is perceived to be just a mouthpiece for rf kuang's anti-colonialist views

at this point i'm genuinely gonna have to reread babel for a 3rd time to see what that means bc. huh?

of course disclaimer preface whatever you are allowed to have your own views you're allowed to feel what you feel you're allowed to not like a book

i just feel like – it's the way a queer character just exists in fiction and in the real world, where they happen to experience prejudice in regards to their identity, but cishets just perceive them to be making "queer" their entire personality

it's the same thing here? when you see a brown character talking about how he feels about britain settling in india (britain, who ends up murdering 100 MILLION indians during this settlement btw!!!) and therefore witness how that naturally results in his strong-willed anti-colonialist views – how is that just his personality? how is that just all that he is? is that all there is to pay attention to whenever ramy opens his mouth?

from what i recall, ramy loves reading and translating, loves cooking even though he's bad at it, loves his religion and okay maybe there is a reading on colonialism in those bits too but when you are literally living in a colonial world, i don't know how you expect none of it to link back. that's how writing works and that's what it means to be a poc in a white man's world

again, just some thoughts lol

[iraprince]

Hiii, i love your stuff and kinda from a distance really look up at you for, in my perception, being able to express yourself without giving a fuck. Thats sick dude, Im so so afraid, of absolutely everything, its nice to think like i might grow into someone less apologetic of my existence. Nice to see people just being yknow

hey, thank you, this is really really nice. the secret that is probably not a secret is that i am also deeply afraid a lot of the time lmao -- but less than i used to be, and in ways that feel less stifling and self-suffocating, if that makes sense.

like, it used to be "i'm scared that if i express myself the way i want to, everyone will find me obnoxious, so let's just sand those edges down to be safe" -- now my fears are more like "now that i'm expressing myself in a way that feels natural and real, i'm afraid that it's all stupid/vapid/not worthwhile or meaningful" (<- specifically abt my art) or "i'm happy that i talk and act the way i want to now, but what if it makes me impossible to befriend," etc etc etc. which still feels bad and puts me in a funk a lot of the time but at least it's a fear that comes After/in reaction to doing stuff, rather than a fear that STOPS me from doing stuff, you know? like, it's evolved into a kind of fear that's less in my way.

anyway. i believe you'll experience something like this, because wanting to grow is the first step of growing. the fact that u hope or wish for something different means you're already on your way. to fewer fucks!! or at least distributing the fucks u give in a way that serves u better

[the-way-astray]

why is aldella not a sweet couple tho… just curious. like is that just your personal headcanon or

no, it has (some) canon basis. annoyingly, the line with the strongest piece of evidence is broken up by a page break in my physical copy of unlocked, but it's on pages 187 and 188 (della's registry file). basically, the council speculates whether alden and della might've noticed that alvar was a traitor if they hadn't been so busy hiding shit from each other. clearly, there's some trust issues going on. della was also ordered by the council to spy on alden, and while she didn't actually tell the council anything of substance, it's hard to say whether that's because she truly didn't know (which would indicate trust issues from both alden's side, from not telling della anything, and della's side, because that implies that if she had known, she would've told the council) or because she purposefully hid alden's search from the council. at the end of her registry file, the council mention that she did tell them something of importance (which is redacted), and context makes it seem like it's a secret of alden's. hence the trust issues.

so clearly, they both prioritize their jobs over their relationship with one another. the themes are theming . . . prestige and protecting the vacker family name will always come before strong interpersonal relationships, and the best way to maintain the name is to do what the council tells them. interestingly, della is implied to be the one that's more dedicated (for lack of a better word) to the council, not alden. i have some lore about that (basically that della and other people that marry into the vacker family feel insecure about not being "real" vackers and therefore have to work twice as hard to prove they're worthy of the name; this would push them to try to be the perfect noble, even more so than vackers by birth). but even though della seems to be the one that has a tendency to be more loyal to the council, alden also keeps plenty of secrets from her. it's heavily implied that he never trusted her with the details of his search, not the way he trusted his sons or quinlin. so who knows what other secret projects he never wanted her to know about? he doesn't trust her, she clearly prioritizes being seen as a loyal noble over him, so that leaves them. somewhere i wouldn't necessarily consider wholesome.

but it's also true that they genuinely care about one another . . . we can see this in della's reaction to alden's mind breaking. nothing particularly bad has happened to della (which shannon should consider doing something about ahem) but we can safely assume alden would have a strong reaction to that as well. they are so screwed up . . . i love them . . .

[shredsandpatches]

Are you at all familiar with and/or do you have opinions on Faustus: that Damned Woman by Chris Bush? I feel like you would have interesting thoughts on it.

PS. I can send you a copy of it if you aren't!

Kinda sorta? I always get kinda picky about Faustus gender swaps that focus it entirely on Being a Woman in a Man's World even though it's a completely sensible approach and one that you kind of have to take if you set it in the historical period, since a woman wouldn't typically have access to the kind of institutional learning that a man would. But also the author of this one tends to see the original play as a story about (male) privilege and hubris and I look at it as being at least as much about isolation and spiritual trauma (the real eternal damnation is the friends we made along the way!) and I think genderswapping that approach would probably be more interesting to me, if done well. (It could also be pretty problematic since my take on Marlowe's Faustus is that he's less ambitious than he thinks he is, because he's really just lonely and wants to do humanities outreach and dick around with his boyfriend. That's more expected from women, so "companionship is ultimately more important than ambition" isn't as interesting a take in that regard, although I think it would work better with a female-presenting Mephistopheles. But the spiritual side of it--the idea that Faustus feels he's damned anyway so why not live while he can--can cross genders quite easily.)

I dunno, possibly I'm bad at solidarity: the implicit argument that being a woman is already hell doesn't actually interest me that much, I guess? It isn't something that resonates with the way I personally experience the world, even as a cisgender woman, certainly not as much as the original play does. But that gets into my complicated relationship with my own gender so I'll just say that Bush's kind of treatment is no doubt really important/resonant for a lot of people but doesn't do it for me.

[kyouka-supremacy]

Why are you tagging posts with dates from last year? Did you queue them last year?

… I did.

[cursezoroark]

confrontation

[b4kuch1n]

I'm not gonna screenshot it bc 1/it really doesn't matter that much and 2/the person who made the comment is a kid but: a while ago I made a comic that's supposed to be a genuine study and reinterpretation of someone else's sprite comic (made in the spirit of authenticity too - to recreate the vibes of the sprite comics from that era, iirc very specifically because it's funny) and I got a comment on that comic's post that's like "glow up"

which is a compliment obvs. and the commenter probably didn't mean anything by it, it's a common expression. but I've been trying to find a way to gracefully put that comment away ever since it appeared lol

I just very much don't want my art to be taken as trying to one-up someone else's art when that's not the piece's intention. especially when the piece that inspired my art is perceived as "low effort" or "shitpost" or stuff like that. I did mention in the tags of that post that my considering it a study is entirely genuine, and I can legitimately write pages about the cool stuff I find in it other than and inherent in the haha funneys, but that's not for you guys that's for me. I just think that approaching art competition-first like that is a miserable way to do it, and (tipping into overthinking here if the whole tiny-comment-got-stuck-in-my-brain-for-almost-a-month part hasn't given that away yet lol) I really don't want that to be the takeaway from my own art. at least generally. if I actually think the source material is trash and what I'm doing is genuinely categorically better I'd just come out and say it lmao

[lesbiansanemi]

Google how to make peace with the fact that you will always be vaguely to extremely uncomfortable (depending on the day) with your body and how others perceive it until the day you die and nothing you do will ever change that

[viviraptor]

one art thing that keeps making me want to pull my hair out is when ppl post a drawing and immediately call it bad/mention its flaws in the caption. whatever you think you're doing with that i can assure you it's not working

[mauv-the-bluest-cat-ever]

i have my benefits of not being out as trans (which is. only one really but it is not being harassed because i dont attract attention) but it fucks with my sense of self

[themostdesperatehoney]

I do respect the yearnful and more sappy/romantic content, I don’t think you need to worry if it fits ur page!! If u wanna be fucked like you’re in love, own itttt 😏 it’s cute

AGHHHHH ur so right honestly. LIKE IT'S MY PAGGEEEEE I can post what I want!!!!