#the woman is a budding mad scientist let her do her alien necromancy!

[geejaysmith]

How would the series have gone if maxwell has survived, and Jacobi died?

No joke, this is a plot point in one of the AUs that's cropped up thanks to Kat's and my conversations. I went from Spongebob memes to role-reversing the Wonder Twins in Time to Kill basically on a whim, and from there my options were "role-reverse Desperate Measures" and "Maxwell /jumps and fistbumps the air/ 2!!". Anyway, I pictured Maxwell's grief-fueled angry outbursts following Jacobi's death and was immediately taken with the idea, and I'm already doing Maxwell 2: Max Harder in another Thing, so Dark Vengeance Maxwell it is!

The key differences between Jacobi and Maxwell in this situation, I think, are that Maxwell doesn't have the same kind of attachment to Kepler or Goddard Futuristics as a whole, nor does she have Jacobi's Big Backstory-Defining Fuck-Up. I'm in the middle of season 3 again and listened to her backstory episode while on a walk just yesterday; She's always known Goddard's had few scruples about how it does business; it was just the place that let her do her work with the least amount of barriers. Plus, you want to look me in the eye and tell me that Kepler's "my authority comes down from on high, what I say goes and if you disobey you'll suffer eternal damnation creative disciplinary measures" attitude wouldn't set off a prodigal pastor's kid's alarm bells? Also, her half-serious "I never cut the wrong wire" in Fire And Brimstone is actually a way bigger indicator of her personality than I realized at first. Not to say that she's never had a decision come back to bite her in the ass, but betting on the wrong side of "if Minkowski isn't bluffing my best friend is going to die" is going to be one that hits hard.

Now, here's something Kat picked up on that I didn't fully process til Kat pointed out this exchange:

KEPLER I'm right. Look: the plan was forall of you never to find out aboutthis aspect of the mission - 

EIFFEL The plan was for us to be dead. 

KEPLER That's kinda what I mean. 

EIFFEL What about Jacobi? 

JACOBI Yeah, was I supposed to find - ? 

KEPLER The point is: you're here now. 

Which she took to mean Maxwell and Jacobi were probably never supposed to know about the duplicates either, nor Cutter's plans once they'd established extraterrestrial contact. So what, was Kepler going to conceal the whole thing from them, or were Maxwell and Jacobi - both of whom have few connections outside Goddard, both of whom were unlikely to be missed - never supposed to make it back to Earth either? 

And that's a whole other topic which has some wrinkles to it (I feel that Maxwell and Jacobi being loose ends was Cutter's call, not Kepler's). My point is: I think Maxwell would pick up on it, and have even less of an issue with turning on Kepler if, in her eyes, he was willing to throw them to the wolves anyways.  Kepler pissed off Minkowski by killing one of her own, why wouldn't she be more likely to respond by finally responding in kind? But Kepler knew all along Lovelace would be able to get back up, something Jacobi wouldn't be able to do, and he took that risk anyways. Additionally, he's not making any hints about, say, tossing Jacobi's body into the star after watching Lovelace reboot. Even if the duplicates did have any idea about what they really are, surely a weaponized alien clone of Jacobi is better than no Jacobi at all, especially if you're so confident in your ability to put a leash on him with the psi-wave regulator, right?

Bottom line: Maxwell goes from kicking herself for making the wrong call and getting her friend killed (when it should have been obvious actually killing Minkowski's crewmates would be all the difference, of course that'd be the thing that sent her over the edge) to putting a plan together to yeet Jacobi into the star, get her friend back, and read Kepler the riot act for being so quick to write artificially created humans off as things, and for thinking so little of people's lives in general that his bullshit mindgames took higher priority than just telling them what they needed to know so they could get some actual results. She always knew Goddard did it's business the dirty way, but in addition to letting her and Jacobi fly blind when just telling them would've made both the module incident AND the mutiny go so much better, do you KNOW, Colonel, do you even GIVE A DAMN about how much time and energy we could've if you hadn't just let her and Jacobi take shots in the dark for the MONTHS we've been up here?? We could've actually gotten something done instead of going in circles trying to hit a target when you won't even tell us what to aim for!

(Unless of course, that was never the point of Command sending them up here to begin with, but put that moment of realization away for later, Alana.)

So yeah, Dark Vengeance Maxwell is less about making Kepler pay for what he did with his life and more getting back at him with "I'm going to let ALL the aliens onto the ship, and there's nothing you can do about it", plus fixing her mistake and bringing Jacobi back, all while getting to violate scientific norms and the laws of nature. See Warren? This is what I can do when you let me do my job.

And that's just the dynamic that emerges within SI-5, I've barely touched upon how the rest of the crew is involved. I don't see her being quite as angry at them as Jacobi was? Especially if she can get him back via Alien Necromancy - she doesn't strike me as having quite the Us vs. Them mentality Jacobi's developed from his time with SI-5 (she asked if they'd actually delivered Hui's letters home, plus her remark "I hoped it wouldn't come to this" when she and Jacobi catch Eiffel and Lovelace at the end of Desperate Times). Sure, she can distance herself and get the job done, and remember that at the end of the day, the only person she really has is Jacobi - but I think she's not so far gone that she can't at least see why the crew did what they did, or that they only did it because her team left them no other options.

She would absolutely not be above leveraging their emotions to get her plans into place afterwards, though. The real snag in things is that now, she actually has to deal with the consequences of her actions with regards to Hera, and THAT is a whole can of worms I haven't yet set aside the time to think about to the degree I'd need to write about it, lol.

#wolf 359 #gill's AU children #I get Olivia Octavius vibes from Maxwell #and I've seen at least two other people remark similarly #the woman is a budding mad scientist let her do her alien necromancy! #and that in short is why Maxwell keeps Going Apeshit in my fic concepts #plus it's waaaaay more fun when your morally-dark-gray mad scientist obviously COULD act like a decent person #and therefore there's tension about whether she will or not or if she really means it when she does lmao #mrbookboy