okay this makes me feel like an ancient hag to say, but i was thinking some younger listeners to wolf 359 might not know of this: "the artist formerly known as warren kepler" isn't something he came up with, it's a reference to prince (the singer) who changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph for a bit, so no one knew what to call him and everyone started saying "the artist formerly known as prince".
now i personally didn't think there was anything further to this. oh kepler made a pop culture reference, fun. he likes funk, sure he likes prince! but then i looked up "the artist formerly known as prince" just out of idle curiosity and turns out what i didn't know is that prince didn't change his name out of eccentricity or as an artistic expression but because he was in a legal dispute with warner brothers who had trademarked "Prince™". which was the man's legal name and not a pseudonym. and so when he split from wb, they disallowed him to perform under his own legal name. it is a true story of a man being held captive by a corporation so thoroughly, his very identity no longer feels like, no longer is his own. so yeah, the artist formerly known as warren kepler. goddard really had that man in a gorilla grip
Pretty sure this AMA awakened something in me when I first saw it
Important to note that that last clip comes right after a very long and serious answer about the lack of LGBT representation in the show which I think makes it funnier
[transcript under the cut]
Zach Valenti: Kepler, Zach Libresco, at the beginning of season three, it sort of appeared-- so this is the person who's asking the question-- it appeared to me, at least to me, to be very close to Maxwell and Jacobi, but towards the end of the season, it seemed like their closeness was more out of fear than loyalty. In your opinion, is this an accurate description of their relationship? Does Kepler actually care about Jacobi and Maxwell? Or are they just people he works with?
Zach Libresco: I got a lot of that information from the mini episodes and how people are recruited and what they're interested in, why they're on the project, so for our recently departed Maxwell, I think what brings her onto the project-- what gets me to get her onto the project-- is like the scientific advancement; the possibility of the resources at hand to make that kind of advancement and to have the license to do it when other people are saying 'you can't do it'. So what's enticing-- how I serve her, is being the person who says 'here, play with these toys. These are your resources. I trust your ethics. I trust you to do the job; I'm just gonna let you go and do it. So, there's affection, but it's more like I have the keys, and she makes the rocket go-go. For Jacobi, there's more of a... I think we... there's a lot more about the history of how much I ride him. I don't know if it's a... There's definitely a longer history between them, and more of 'I'm near an explosive, you're near an explosive, what's the right thing to do in this situation?' They've been through the worst together, in a different connecting way than Maxwell and Kepler have. Would you guys have thoughts on that as well?
Noah Masur: Yeah I think Jacobi has been Kepler's first mate for a while, even if they're not mates.
Zach Libresco: And he rose to that point, he did not start there.
[NEXT CLIP]
Zach Valenti: It sounds like they have, and will immortalize 'Kepler riding Jacobi hard'. Phrasing. Phrasing, Libresco.
Zach Libresco: Kepcobi!
[NEXT CLIP]
Noah Masur: All I know is... Kepler's been riding Jacobi hard for years.
Zach Libresco: And we're not saying that's canon, but we're not saying it's not canon.
I relistened to the “no complaints” wolf 359 episode again, and sorry but if someone brought 50 pounds of fireworks for me to set off because they knew I liked exploding things, I too would commit like sooooo many war crimes for them if they asked.
The Empty Man Cometh was actually foreshadowing for Warren Kepler arriving on the Hephaestus because let's be honest do we know any person more hollowed out, more empty inside than our self-proclaimed Artist Formerly Known send tweet
