#wolf 359 fake quotes

[specialagentartemis]

Fake fic title ask game, quoting my friend (with permission): "you don't shed your previous year like a cicada every birthday."

Hahaha, nice. I love it.

This would be a drabble or ficlet collection for Wolf 359 about each birthday the Hephaestus crew spent up there. All the episodes have precise dates; you can work out what was going on on each character’s birthday. Minkowski’s first birthday in space. alone while her crewmates were in cryo-stasis, piloting the last leg of the trip from the Hermes to the Hephaestus… their first year on the station, Eiffel grouchy that his birthday is dull of Mandatory Christmas Activities, it only occurring to Eiffel to ask Hera if she has a birthday a whole week later, but luckily her birthday is at the end of January so he didn’t miss it… Hera actually celebrating increments of 10,000 hours online because Earth years mean nothing to her… Minkowski learning how it feels when she gets grouchy that Eiffel celebrates her birthday as Star Wars Day…

The Eiffel’s catastrophic 32nd birthday, of course. Eiffel trying to come up with a way to celebrate Hera’s birthday when they’re still on edge after Hilbert’s mutiny, but settling into a ‘new normal’ (this is two days before Let’s Kill Hilbert). Minkowski’s bleak birthday during the s2-s3 break when she has to stave off the conviction they’re all abandoned here to die (she never thought she’d miss Eiffel’s Star Wars jokes). Lovelace’s even bleaker birthday, a few weeks after “Pan-Pan.”

Eiffel’s awkward birthday with Kepler (is he existential about getting another birthday, after coming so close to dying? Would he rather be playing Funzo?) Minkowski’s birthday very shortly before “Desperate Times / Desperate Measures.” Lovelace’s birthday the day after “Constructive Criticism”—she’s in the midst of her grappling with what it even means to have a birthday, yeah, but hey, at least Eiffel isn’t being so Fuckin weird around her anymore and is tentatively trying to make amends by having a fun birthday party. Or as fun as possible under the circumstances. Is she 36? Is she 33? Is she 1 and a half? Hell if she knows.

Eiffel’s last/first birthday in space, on the Urania, nearly home.

It would be a very Wolf 359 collection about how their past is clinging to them, and how they’re handling going forward under the weight of it, and how they’ve changed each year under everything that’s happened.

[officerdeiffel]

hilbert: interesting. the odds of that happening coincidentally are vanishingly small

minkowski: i would say infinitesimally

eiffel: yes, and i would say teenily weenily. we all know words

[inventionofparanoia]

Lovelace: I’m the kind of girl that likes to think things through.

Minkowski: Since when? I just saw you eat a marshmallow that was still on fire.

[actionyak]

Eiffel: "When is a door not a door? When it's a star!"

"Bob": "Your language truly is an enigma."

[annabelle--cane]

can't believe wolf 359 made a whole episode based on that clickhole fake astronaut quote

[princegabriel]

Dear Rule 63 Writer

Welcome to the party, pal!

For this particular exchange, since I’ve been fortunate lately to have found and consumed media that mostly has gender dynamics I like, I’m mostly interested in seeing “the further adventures of character A and character B” except that one or both of them has a different gender. Doesn’t mean I don’t think anything would change about them, and I don’t mean to stifle your creativity, it’s just that there’s no specific Thing I want to see w/r/t gender. 

Here are some general things I really like:

Matter-of-fact declarations of love/friendship.

People being productive while pining–either acknowledging their feelings but realizing they still have important things to do, or straight up burying the feelings in work.

Women And Nonbinary People Getting Stuff Done

Fake dating

Black comedy

Silly comedy and bad puns

Conversely, people being very extra and having THE MOST feelings, in the style of 19th century romance

Stories where STUFF happens due mostly to people just being people

Places with secrets

Game narratives, as in, the MC(s) are playing some kind of immersive, fantastical, high-stakes game. See: The Game of Sunken Places, Doctor Who: The Ghost Monument. IDK how that would apply here, but they are neat and if you come up with a concept that you think would work, I bet it would be cool!

I know I didn’t put this in my sign-up, but here are some general DNWs:

Rape/dubcon/torture porn

Major character death

Tooth injuries

Misgendering

Characters’ defining characteristic being “in love with this person”

Unrequested non canonical ships

Diet talk

A/B/O dynamics

Any bodily waste products being used for sex

Unrequested AUs

Now for the specifics:

1. The Magnus Archives

Rating: G-M

Ships: F!Gerard Keay & Gertrude Robinson, Sasha James/F!Tim Stoker, F!Robert Montauk & Julia Montauk, F!Michael "Mike" Crew & Jude Perry, F!Adelard Dekker/Gertrude Robinson, F!Trevor Herbert & Julia Montauk

I love Gertrude Robinson very much. She’s a stone-cold badass and I love how straightforward she is when it comes to resolving some problems (just blow up the building where the ritual is, duh) and how sneaky her approach is to other problems (”why the tape recorders, you ask? well, I'm just an old-fashioned lady, haha!”). 

I’m a big fan of her mentorship with Gerry, and how she is explicitly not a mother figure. Like she has more experience and Gerry is a baby but they’re colleagues, really. I wouldn’t mind Gerry having some complicated feelings regarding Gertrude as a surrogate parental figure, though. I love Gerry being whip-smart and capable but still lacking in things that come from a healthy upbringing (you know, where one of your parents doesn’t murder the other and then recruit you into their spooky magic plots).

I’ve chosen to extrapolate from the bits and pieces we get that Gertrude and Adelard are the kind of close friends where even if they don’t speak for years they know where they stand with each other and can pick right back up. Of course, we also know that Gertrude didn’t let very many people get close to her, so there’s a pretty wide spectrum of possibility in there. In the case of a romantic relationship, I think Gertrude would not really want to talk about it while Adelard would. I also like how Adelard is characterized as terse and efficient in the “Distant Cousin” episode but more poetic in letters and statements to Gertrude. 

Sasha/Tim is just cute. I’d love to read more of their banter, maybe see them working closely together while researching a statement, or see what they’re like outside of work. I’d rather this be set during season 1 or earlier, or have an AU where Sasha doesn’t get got by the Not-Them. There are some lovely fics where Tim is trying to figure out how accurate his memories of Sasha really are, but they are very sad and I can’t read them all the time.

Oohoohoo, Julia Montauk. I love Julia Montauk. She goes from having a seemingly normal childhood to her mom disappearing, but that’s okay because her remaining parent takes good care of her, then that rug gets pulled out from under her, and everything is wrong. And she really tries to be normal, and then Trevor saves her and not only is normal not really an option any more, weird and horrible is so much more fulfilling. 

I’m not a big serial killer fan, but Robert Montauk is just trying to keep Julia safe in a world that is so much worse. How do you do that, how do you kill that many people, after losing your wife, and still come home to your kid and make sure she’s safe and happy and has no idea what you do when you say you’re going to work?

And then there’s Trevor Herbert—homeless, recovering from addiction, and risking incarceration and worse because there are things out there that people don’t understand that can and will kill them. Trevor Herbert, who saves and inadvertently adopts an adult to form a little monster-killer family.

Mike Crew and Jude Perry: I just really like the idea of their being buds and hanging out or comparing stories of tormenting innocent people. Or maybe they have a weird symbiotic relationship—how do the Desolation and the Vast relate to each other? Are they rivals? Or do they have their own (Leitner) book club?

In terms of changing names, the only one I’d feel super weird about keeping the same is Robert—could be shortened or turned into Roberta, whatever works.

2. The Penumbra Podcast

Ah yes, my one-stop gender shop. I love the way this show approaches gender and sexuality, that even if characters don’t spell out theirs (which I think only happens once, with Jet), we can usually assume they’re not both straight and cis. Also, despite the show being a noir/scifi story set hundreds of years in the future, it feels very realistic w/r/t identity and personal interactions. Fandom-specific DNW: coming out. One of my favorite things about Penumbra is that everyone just knows everyone else’s pronouns. It’s not that people can’t or don’t realize their gender identity or sexuality later in life—they do even in the show, it’s just that I like the way canon covers it so much that I’m all set.

Rating: G-M

Ships: Juno Steel & NB!Rita, Buddy Aurinko & F!Jet Sikuliaq, F!Peter Nureyev/F!Juno Steel

I love Juno’s and Rita’s friendship so much. Would love to see them working together, especially after the events of Soul of the People, when Juno finally, explicitly starts treating her better. I love seeing characters getting to exercise their competence, so Rita’s hacking combined with Juno’s detective skills: *chef’s kiss.* Are they solving a case? Are they working a heist? Is it a heist that turns into a case?? Alternately, maybe they’re just hanging out. Juno needs a better work/life balance, and Rita’s a lot better at that. 

Buddy and Jet are also very much friendship goals. I love how Jet has Buddy’s back no matter what, which definitely includes calling her out when she’s doing something destructive, and Buddy loves and appreciates Jet for that. They know each other and accept each other, but they also grow and change together. Meeting when they were both in a really unsteady place could have helped that. I’d love to see one of them comforting the other during a difficult time, or doing a job together either before or during season 3.

Peter/Juno: I mean. This is my jam. Maybe something set during season 1 that plays up the thief/detective dynamic? Maybe something set during season 3 when they’re trying to navigate their relationship in a healthy way when they’re both simultaneously terrified and also just want to make out already? Pairing specific DNW: please please please no Peter alone in the hotel room at the end of or just after Final Resting Place.

Rating E:

Peter/Juno: I mean. This is my jam. Everything above applies here. Smut likes: praise kink, frottage, masturbation, phone sex, teasing, edging, sex when the characters are def supposed to be doing something else, sex in public places where other people probably can’t actually see them but it *feels* risqué.

3. Wolf 359

Ship: F!Daniel Jacobi/F!Warren Kepler

GOOD SHIP. The trust. The loyalty. The King Lear quote when they meet! I love the rare occasion when Kepler lets Jacobi in. I love how they try to let each other know how they feel through actions rather than words. I’d love another time-out from the job like in Mission Mishaps: No Complaints, or a high-stakes situation where they have to defuse a bomb or blow something up, or something in between.

Thanks for writing for me! I hope you have fun with this!

[caladblog]

2017 The Year in Review

jesus h. fuck, we’re still doing this whole... “the passage of time” thing? really? ugh. okay. give me a moment.

*drags hands down face*

*sighs*

okay! it’s been another year! goddamn look at us go! welcome to my Second Annual Recap of New Fiction Stuff!!

(hark! a disclaimer: this features things that i experienced for the first time in 2017, not necessarily things that were released in 2017, because i live literally underneath a rock and it’s a bit out of step with the zeitgeist down here)

Books

Nominations: Neuromancer by William Gibson, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Winner: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. Neuromancer was good but this fic did it better. The Fifth Season was excellent and beautiful-- if you’ve read Jemisin’s previous trilogy about gods, there were aspects and elements from those stories that were really brought into perfect focus here; it’s a testament to her growth as a writer and I can’t wait to get my hands on the next two books in the series.

But The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet takes home the title because it is pretty much everything I want in a space opera. Everything. A galactic civilization that isn’t just an echo of European colonization. Interspecies conflict that isn’t a thinly-veiled allegory for racism. Aliens that are truly alien, different from humans and different from each other, with societies and cultures and values that logically follow from these differences. Lush worldbuilding (universebuilding?) that never sacrifices the plot or the characters. An artificial intelligence who sidesteps or directly refutes every frustrating AI trope in the book. Three-dimensional characters! Found family! ‘Xe’ being used as the linguistically-normal gender-neutral pronoun! A lesbian relationship between a human and a reptilian!

it’s good is what i’m sayin

Movies

Nominations: Rogue One, Thor: Ragnarok, And Then There Were None

Winner: Thor: Ragnarok. Stop the fucking presses, I saw a movie less than a month after it was released. This has only happened, like... twice in the last decade. Literally.

Anyway. Rogue One was good, but I’m not a huge fan of the war stars universe. I’m even less a fan of the marvel cinematic universe, especially what it’s become since cap2, but Thor: Ragnarok just fucken blows everything out of the water. No contest. It’s hilarious, it’s epic, it’s the first movie to get Thor’s characterization right. It loses points for including B******t C*********h, but it gains more points for everything described in this post, especially the way it specifically called out the way that societies built on imperialism try to cover up or whitewash the shameful bloody parts of their history. (“Proud to HAVE it. Ashamed of how he GOT it!!”)

Video Games

Nominations: Space Pilgrim Saga, VA-11 Hall-A, Fallen London

Winner: Fallen London. Confession time: I played a lot of video james this year, kind of went wild at the steam summer sale, and it was really hard to narrow it down to three nominations. Ultimately, though, Space Pilgrim Saga was nominated for humor and space and an endgame relationship between a gray-ace woman and a bisexual woman. VA-11 Hall-A was nominated for design and good music and queer representation and me being super gay for Dana.

But Fallen London wins because I’ve never played something that so naturally and regularly validates my gender identity and queerness. Not only do you get to choose a nonbinary option when creating your character, you also get to choose how the game addresses you and change it whenever you want, however many times you want. It’s always there (being referred to as a ‘gentleperson’ or any one of several non-gendered titles) but it’s never the defining aspect of your character or the subject of scrutiny/ridicule/whatever by any NPCs. Similarly, every point at which a romance is ‘required’* provides you with a male and a female option (and, as far as I’ve seen, the option to romance them both at once, too) and your choice of these is never determined or impacted by your character’s gender. Despite the ‘historical’ setting.

*in scare quotes because it’s needed to advance some stories and unlock others, but you do have the option of just. not doing them. or seducing the character for money or social status or some other personal gain, and not love. i'd like it if there was a non-romance option to advance these storylines, but eh.

It’s also just really well-written and interesting and funny and free to play-- there are storylines that cost money, and I’ve got my eye on several, but you never have to spend anything to advance. Even just keeping to the free storylines, there’s a ridiculous variety of things to do for whatever sort of person you want to play as. Go sign up now! Beware of wells! Don’t go North!!

Comics

Nominations: Harrow County vol. 3 “Snake Doctor”, Bitch Planet vol. 2 “President Bitch”, Ms. Marvel arc “Mecca”

Winner: “Mecca”

Okay.

I don’t remember if I ever posted it anywhere, but when this arc was being released earlier this year I had a Debate(TM) with myself about escapist storytelling vs. storytelling that holds up a mirror during rough times--how can you write escapism when hiding from problems does nothing? how can you write realism when the world already does so much to grind us down?--and I eventually settled that we need both, to read and to be written. Realism to show us how to fight. Escapism to help us rest so we can get back up.

This arc is so real it hurts, especially when you can only read it in monthly installments, but it’s the same hurt as pressing on a sore muscle. It’s necessary. There’s not a single aspect of this story that isn’t directly related to what’s happened this year, and what will go on happening next year, and the difficulty of resisting it, and the importance of continuing to do so anyway.

Also G. Willow Wilson appears to be the only Marvel writer who remembers that hydra is literally a splinter group of fuckng nazis so like

Podcasts

Nominations: Archive 81, Wolf 359, The Magnus Archives

Winner: Archive 81. What can I say? It’s precisely my shit. In fact, it’s so much my shit that it’s kind of hard to believe I’ve only known about it for a few months. Time is fake? I’ve already written in depth about how much I like this podcast over here, so I’m not gonna repeat myself.

Has to be said though that The Magnus Archives was a very close second. Like, when I started writing this post a few weeks ago, I had most of the winners already chosen, but this one was a last-minute decision. Especially when episode 81 (*EXTREMELY LOUD TWILIGHT ZONE THEME SONG*) was released and marked the first time in my life I’ve ever related to a male main character. Maybe a main character, period? At some point I’ll post a list of sampler episodes you can listen to without being too spoiled for the main plot to see if you wanna invest in a thing that’s got 86 installments so far.

so there we go! that’s been a sample of my year’s experience in fiction. see you all on the other side of this arbitrary dividing line that’s only marginally related to physical reality!

[queenofthecommunistcannibals]

Wolf 359 Head Canons -- Part IV: Warren Kepler

Finishing off the Terrible Trio

Part I: Daniel Jacobi, Part II: Alana Maxwell, Part III: Doug Eiffel

Kepler...

1) ...Comes from a military family.  His father died in Desert Storm when Kepler was 13.  His mother never really recovered from it.  She is still alive, but believes both her husband and son* died in the army.  

2) ...Was born in Chicago but his family moved to Tennessee when he was ten.  He developed a Southern accent pretty quickly. 

3) ...Is an only child.

4) ...Looks like your stereotypical Marvel super hero, blond hair, blue eyes, tall, muscular, square-jawed.  The difference is he has a scar on one cheek from a mission with Jacobi and Maxwell.  I’ll eventually get to the fic about it so...no spoilers for now.  And, of course that he will never save your life unless there’s something in it for him.

5) ...Was extremely popular in high school unlike his crew.  He played football and got amazing grades and was valedictorian.  Graduated both high school and college early.

6) ...did serve in the military, the Army rather than the Air Force.  He achieved the rank of Captain before Goddard Futuristics snatched him up in the mid-2000s.  He served in Afghanistan and had a stellar reputation with his higher-ups.  His men were both terrified of him and loved him.  But he was notorious for being extremely cruel to both enemies and civilians.  He showed no mercy.  When GF faked his death it was in a bombing in Afghanistan.  

7) ...’s Long Story Shorts are sometimes true, sometimes they’re grotesque exaggerations, and sometimes they’re just entirely made up.  For example he does have a story about seeing Maxwell’s feet, he can prove the escape from Alcatraz was possible (although he hasn’t earned any fame for it), he was once in a funk band (although they weren’t famous), and the Argentinian Incident is a Hell of a story.

8) ...Tells his Long Story Shorts as a power play.  You have to listen to him because because he is your superior officer.  So shut the fuck up and strap in, it’s gonna be a looooong trip. 

9) ...Became Major after an incident, the incident they framed Littlewood for, in Indiana.  It was a GF mission in which Goddard was after some very advanced tech from a rival company.  They got it, but Kepler’s orders also leveled an entire town, killing many, which is difficult to cover up to say the least.  

10) ...Came to work for Cutter because he of the promised power.  He had been forced into a disgraced civilian life and he was desperate to get out of it.  He was discharged from the army when Kepler’s cruelty and the unacceptable number of casualties caught up with him.  It was at that point that Cutter came to him and promised him a bright future with Goddard Futuristics.  Kepler didn’t take long to sign up.

11) ...Does love roller coasters and also things like sky-diving and bungie-jumping.  He, Maxwell, and Jacobi are all adrenaline junkies. 

12) ...Is more expendable than he thinks.

13) ...Likes Jacobi but not as much as himself.  If he was told to kill Jacobi by Cutter and he couldn’t find some way to get out of it, he would absolutely shoot Jacobi in the head right then and there.  Although he has helped save Jacobi’s life before, including from Cutter. 

14) ...Is a bit of a Shakespeare nerd.  Hence why he can quote King Lear.

15) ...Is bi and pretty aromantic, he has felt the occasional romantic feelings for people, but they are few and far between.  He also never acts on those romantic feelings.  His sexual relationships are largely a series of one-night-stands. 

16) ...Has some very violent tendencies.  When he gets really, truly angry he has to take it out on someone.  Back on Earth he had a bunch of soldiers to “train” with (and beat the crap out of) on the Urania it’s just Jacobi and Maxwell.  Jacobi bears the brunt of the abuse on the Urania because he will take it without his loyalty to Kepler being questioned, the same might not be true for Maxwell. 

*Like the Hephaestus crew the deaths of everyone is SI-5 were faked so they have no civilian life.  Hence Kepler’s speech in “A Matter of Perspective.” Kepler was telling Eiffel the truth that he has no life outside of his job, he was lying when he said it bothered him.