#I do find it fun that her name is a reference to a Greek mathematician | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pushing500 · 5 months

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Laursen is so good with people. He's not even assigned to wardening as a high priority, but whenever he takes a turn at it, he succeeds. I love him so much.

I also love Euclid, she's cool. The psychopath trait will definitely help her fit right in with the cult, I reckon.

Her name is probably supposed to reference the ancient Greek mathematician of the same name, based on the whole "genies are the smart xenotype" thing, but... I can't help but think of it as her SCP object class, lmao.

Euclid immediately set to work proving herself as a capable new member of the cult, and now Vasso is dressed to the nines in his new masterwork cape.

Then poor Cecil got sick, so he's taking a break from helping around the colony and getting some well-deserved rest.

And finally, two bionic thrumbos wandered onto the map and I fell in love immediately. Nobody in the colony has an animal skill high enough to tame them, sadly.

Worry not, though! Our Drakonori prisoner, Magic Man, has a decent animal handling skill. When we recruit him, his first task to prove himself will be taming these thrumbos! No pressure, Magic Man.

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commsroom · 7 months

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Hello. It occurred to me recently that Hera is the only character of the main cast who is not named for an engineer/physicist/mathematician. Do u think this has any significance regarding her role on the team and her character, or not really?

(Also, the wiki says she's probably named for the Greek goddess Hera which has interesting connotations if it's true. There was also a NASA probe called Hera at some point I'm pretty sure, but I don't know which is the more likely namesake. I just enjoy the names in W359 because I am a physics student and it's fun to hear character names in all my classes.)

hi! i think the answer is kind of... yes and no? like, gabriel urbina has said his process of naming characters is first to choose a category to pick surnames from, to narrow down the options (so, in this case, famous scientists), and then to find given names that he thinks sound good with those surnames. so i don't think symbolism is the purpose, and i don't think it needs to be. but hera, obviously... doesn't have a last name. and so the way she was named (both in and out of universe) is different, and i think that does represent something.

first: hera is the mother program of the hephaestus. the hera of greek mythology is the mother of hephaestus and cast him out of the sky. the allusions are obviously intentional. (as are other mythology names in the show, but that's another topic.) second: a lot of real world things relating to space are named for mythology, and clearly cutter agrees that's how it should be done. but also: goddard's AIs share the same naming scheme with their spacecrafts. hera, rhea, eris, enlil, perseus, hyperion vs. hephaestus, hermes, tiamat, urania, valkyrie, sol. in one sense, this marks them as company property, people who are treated as equivalent to technology.

but, third: from a writing perspective, gabriel urbina has also said he only started getting a sense of who hera was when he started writing for michaela swee in the second episode; there's such a difference in how she's written just between those first two scripts. you can even see in the first recording script that her name was stylized HERA, as if it stood for something, like a much more standard AI character might have been named. which goes so far against what her name actually ended up representing that it retroactively becomes an in-universe microaggression.

and so, fourth: despite all of that, the real thing that makes hera's name stand apart is that it's a chosen name. it's offered to her, but not the way a name is given - it's a bribe, with the understanding it can be taken away from her. rachel says she can see what else is available if hera "has a problem with the etymology or any of the allusions," which is kind of interesting. but hera chooses to be hera. i don't think it's a stretch to say she has a deadname and a chosen name: that she has to introduce herself every time in a way that amounts to "i prefer to be called hera" and that her name is treated as optional and conditional, a reward for good behavior. if hera wanted to take a middle or last name, she would be choosing those, too.

i think ultimately names in wolf 359 are less about categorization and/or symbolism and more about identity. names are symbols that represent and contain the people who claim them. how people are referred to, when, and by whom - as well as how people refer to themselves by name as an act of self-determination, a reclamation of identity, or in defiance - is all central to the themes of the show. and, from that perspective, i think how hera is named (and what her name means to her, how she has had to construct and fight for parts of her identity that others are given as a default assumption) is significant, but i don't think it really sets her apart from the others when their names are treated in similar ways thematically.

#hi!! always happy to hear from you #sorry i always think i'm going to keep it short and then i. don't. i don't know if this even answers your question.#but i can imagine it's funny to hear these names in that context and. be thinking about wolf 359 characters.#also obviously minkowski is also. in some ways denied her name. but it represents a different experience and a different aspect of identity #anyway. it feels like such a no-brainer but i kind of love the way urbina says he names characters because like.#yeah i guess that is how most people are named. they have a last name and then someone decides what first name would go with it.#that is true.#wolf 359 #w359 #hera wolf 359 #asks

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