#except Hilbert

[that-dumb-blond]

Ive said before that the only podcast character I see the as looking the same as their voice actor is Doug Eiffel but I’m afraid I lied. It’s Mr Cutter too.

[pokemon-npcs]

Hello :D I was wondering, do you know if there's any NPC quotes in LGPE that mentions the RGB trio going on their journey 4 years ago? I could've sworn an article online had a screenshot of it, but I can't find it anymore.

I can try to look it up! I don't know if anyone mentions them all at the same time, but I'm pretty sure that they are all mentioned. You can encounter all of them, after all. Not as sure that Green is ever referenced in a past tense, though.

....Y'know, this reminds me of the fact that we found out in XY that Blue went to Kalos to study. I love fun little stuff like that :)

[commsroom]

i'll always love how many people instinctively draw eiffel with a resemblance to zach valenti. guy who looks the way he sounds.

[jaxihammer]

I feel like we're all just collectively ignoring the Blessed Eternal thing. Like yeah, Commander, let it live rent free in the vents to further your Character Development™, I'm sure the mind-controlling-the-medical-officer thing was a total fluke???

[wwpbviiid]

I’m trying to find a couple quotes from each wolf359 character that say a lot about them (and which don’t need context to do that), any suggestions?

[clonerightsagenda]

("Pan Pan")

LOVELACE I will never understand you people. How can you stand to be around him? HILBERT Because they understand what you never have. You do what you need to. You adapt. You survive. Sometimes you have to work with the devil, but - MINKOWSKI Hilbert, stop talking. HILBERT Why? Am I being too indelicate? MINKOWSKI No, because if you don't shut up right this second she's not going to get a chance to kill you.

("Happy Endings")

HILBERT Captain? Slowly, three heads turn towards the other person in the room. HILBERT (CONT'D) You have been very quiet. So she has. For a BEAT she just stares at Hilbert evenly. HILBERT (CONT’D) You understand. You know how bad things will get. You are not like them. You are - LOVELACE You have ten seconds to get out of this room.

Love that Hilbert just keeps trying the exact same thing on different people. Actually that's his entire character isn't it

[antihibikase-archive]

Cheren and Hilbert!

CHEERING

[dandyshucks]

every now and then i think about hera from w.olf 359 and ... my wife .....

[f3lldrag0n]

the female version of every fire emblem avatar always has a better design robin is maybe the only case where it's about even, but overall, girl avatar all the way

[acollectionofcuriousreblogs]

So I know there are a lot of us who appreciate Minkowski as a big and buff woman, but hear me out, consider the thematic implications of tiny Minkowski. Of 5’0, athletic but not jacked, Minkowski. Because then, besides Eiffel, Minkowski would be the only character who is just pretty average. She’s not a brilliant scientist like Hilbert or Maxwell. She’s not in control of an entire space shuttle or an immortal android like Hera and Pryce. She can’t dodge out of the way of bullets like Cutter. And she can’t match the physical threat that Lovelace and Kepler have proven they posses. In fact, she’s not much of a threat at all, which is precisely why I think Cutter picked her.

She’s strict and disciplined, a natural leader who follows orders and trusts authority; exactly the kind of person Goddard can manipulate. However, even if she ever does wisen up (which she obviously does) she won’t be able to cause great damage to others or the company. She’s easily dispensable…so Cutter believes.

And yet time and time again, we see Minkowski survive. This woman, who was marked to be killed off back in season 1, manages to be one of few to make it back to Earth in the finale. Minkowski is constantly going against people bigger, brainier, and better than herself but she always comes out on top. She survives Hilbert’s takeover. She forces Kepler to surrender during their mutiny. She beats Jacobi’s ultimatum without any loss of life. She kills the immortal Cutter. Not to mention all the many, many disasters and dangers she endures (and brings her crew through) while in space.

And that’s because she’s a testament to the human spirit. An embodiment of sheer will and determination. Of unrelenting perseverance, even in the face of impossible odds. Don’t underestimate the little guy because they can endure. Renee Minkowski, the woman constantly proving you don’t need to be exceptional to do great things. And I love her for it.

[etherealblaseballresearch]

coming in under the wire for the fiction podcast zine fest - a zine of 8 space-themed podcasts. (i had to limit myself to podcasts i'd listened to all the way through to keep to a sensible number lol)

zine text under the cut:

Fiction podcasts... in space!!

Wolf 359: Comms Officer Eiffel's attempts to not do his job are foiled by stickler Commander Minkowski, malfunctioning AI Hera, dubiously ethical Dr Hilbert and... aliens?

The Strange Case of Starship Iris: Violet Liu is rescued after an explosion kills the rest of the Iris crew. Her rescuers may not be... above board, but they're her best chance to figure out what happned - and to stop a war.

The Pasithea Powder: Voicemails between Sophie, war hero, and Jane, scientist, traitor, ex-friend and the only person Sophie can turn to when a "friendship delegation" goes wrong.

Janus Descending: Horror following Chel and Peter as they explore an apparently lifeless planet. Chel's story starts from the beginning, Peter's from the end.

Second Star to the Left: Gwen has 5 years to explore a planet all alone - except for a long distance caller.

Girl in Space: X has lived alone on this spaceship (except for an AI and a Jurassic Park DVD) - until now.

We Fix Space Junk: Two repair women travel the galaxy fixing space junk. Planet of the week, quick and funny

The Adventure Zone: Amnesty: Not tecnically a space podcast? You'll get it. Minerva [heart]

Happy listening [smily face]

[dysfunctionalcreature]

so maybe this is a bit out-of-character but hear me out: after the finale they get back to Earth, and instead of killing them or something Goddard Futuristics decides to pay them each a whole bunch of money to stay silent about everything that happened. and so they can live pretty good after that, except Eiffel still works whatever job he can find and lives quite simply, and whenever people ask what happened to his money he just changes the subject. but what he actually did with it is he donated basically all of it into medical research about radiation poisoning, because there was always a part of him that felt guilty, and like he made the wrong decision in shutting down Hilbert's experiments....

[ridiculoustrainsofthought]

(So I came up with this a while back and wasn't sure if anyone else had brought it up. But I recently checked out The Mountains of Madness from the library, and remembered bringing this up with my friends a few years back and just felt like "preserving" it.)

This is going to sound crazy, but it's fun to think about, so hear me out: Have you heard of a story called The King in Yellow?

I got to looking at the source material and I'm stunned to think it may have been quite an influence on the plot of Pokemon Black and White. But I can't confirm anything since I haven't seen it mentioned as a reference anywhere in B&W. 

More specifically The King in Yellow is a series of short stories where only the first four seem to be connected to the title. But there's some clear potential parallels with the first story The Repairer of Reputations, which is what I'll focus on.

So first off, the story's main character is a man named Hildred which likely has the same basis as Hilda and Hilbert would derive their names from.

Except plot wise he'd actually be more like N.

Hildred Castaigne is an unreliable narrator living in a “futuristic New York City” of 1920 who explains at the beginning that he used to be carefree and aimless but there was an accident where he got attacked and fell off his horse which gave him a blow to the head. After that he was taken into an asylum where he underwent a complete personality change, pouring over old documents and literature, basically a recluse, but he gained a strong sense of ambition as he never had before! (Sounds a bit familiar of another extreme recluse who came out somewhat brainwashed in his conviction, right?) This is potentially brought on after reading a play called The King in Yellow which the book we read gets its name from.

We don't get much info about the play itself except "references" to it about Carcosa, an otherworldly kingdom that fell into decay and mentions several places connected by lakes. (I'm not sure if they're all cities within the kingdom or neighboring kingdoms.) Supposedly the first act starts as a simple medieval drama but the second act is left very vague except that it "reveals irresistible truths" which drive the reader into madness.

With that out of the way, here's where things get... Interesting?

Out of the asylum, Hildred, at some point before the story takes place, has ended up in the snares of a "Mr. Wilde"; an "eccentric" deformed man with a mutilated arm and face (the story makes note of this at several points) who has an equally twisted delight in abusing his cat until she attacks him and we get the foreshadow that she’s going to kill him at this rate. (I'm sure some of Ghetsis' Pokemon would love the chance.)

Mr. Wilde may be crazy but he's said to be very smart. As the title "Repairer of Reputation" he gained wealth and power through blackmailing many powerful men (like the Sages?) and subtly raising an army of over ten thousand under a cult following by use of The King in Yellow and "The Yellow Sign" the king wears. Together, they plan to overthrow the U.S. government and begin The Imperial Dynasty of America under their new king Hildred! (Whether Wilde has an army or not is still debatable. Heck, even how much influence he has is debatable since we only have Hildred's word to go by. Obviously in Pokemon the answer is yes.)

Which is curious since I know a lot of people joked about with BW like... We're in New York. What's this whole deal with kings and the castle ruins? America never had a king.

Ah, but then the parallels come up again when Hildred is oh so ready to earn his crown but Wilde tells him there's a problem. His cousin, Louis, is also in line for the throne as they're both descendents from the ancient kingdom of Hyades. And while Hildred thinks himself to be the rightful heir of The Last King, Wilde tells him that he needs to do something about his cousin first and gives Hildred a long knife.

But Hildred, much like N, doesn't really want to fight Louis, and the two meet several times through the story over the course of several weeks (months?). 

Now up to this point Louis had kinda been in Hilda / Hilbert’s position. At first he seems friendly with Hildred with Louis being concerned but not intervening with Hildred's ties to Wilde. But over time we see Hildred growing more irritated by Louis' sweet and sometimes boyish nature as he tries to humor him in his delusions even after learning about the whole kingship thing. (Much like we see N getting more aggressive as the story goes on because the player is so nice and good with their Pokemon, it's challenging what he's been told about what Trainers are like. Stop being wonderful, dang it!)

Eventually Hildred snaps. But instead of killing Louis, he confronts his cousin where he does finally reveal to him about being the King and shows him all the pages of The Imperial Dynasty records to reveal to him what's going on and demand instead that his cousin should abdicate his right to the throne and go into exile! Which Louis, having no interest in this, agrees. But Hildred also demands that Louis is forbidden from marrying then to end his bloodline. Even going so far as to say the conspiracy is going to kill the girl Louis is engaged to ensure there will be no one to challenge Hildred later on. Louis has finally had enough of this! When Hildred flees, his cousin goes after him.

(There's not really an equivalent to the murder thing, although unlike the book, it'd be about this point that the takeover occurs and Plasma has threatened to crush Alder. But that's more between him and Ghetsis. Either way, we save Alder and Hilda / Hildred is in hot pursuit of N into the Plasma castle!)

Hildred then ends up running back to Wilde's place and takes his crown and cloak in victory as he thinks he'll finally be king! ...Except Wilde ends up dying on him (finally pushed the cat too far and she murdered him.) Hildred realizes that without Wilde and his conspiracy, he personally doesn't have the means to take over. He has no connection to this “army”, he cannot read the ledger of "powerful men" to manipulate. Without Wilde, he is NOTHING. This fact suddenly has him spiralling into a full on mental breakdown before the police show up with Louis and end up taking Hildred away and we learn later he ended up back in the asylum. (Which is kind of what happens with Ghetsis in the end, he lost the one person holding his plot together, goes into a fit of madness, and albeit much later is one of the few Evil Leaders to actually get arrested.)

-Cough- 

So BW doesn't really follow the plot but the point is, I think there’s actually several elements that could be derived from this specific story. The young man being brainwashed and convinced he’s going to become king of a perfect society that was lost ages ago; led on by an even more deranged man who appears to have been mangled by the creatures he tortures with delight and who has been making all of the preparations for a full scale government takeover by amassing an army in the shadows. There’s a fight for the throne when it turns out the prophecy speaks of two heirs that need to fight each other, note the second “heir” is completely oblivious to this and just gets dragged into the lunacy more and more as they try to foil the plans of this takeover. And while it doesn’t induce madness automatically, Plasma believes that in order to get people to fall in line, the king merely needs to show the public that they’ve obtained the Sacred Dragon which gives them authority, while in this case it’s said that all those who see The Yellow Sign have no choice but to bow down to them. 

It’s just… I’m probably grasping at straws, but the parallels I see just have me fascinated.

At least in the end of BW, Ghetsis is the one to have the full out melt down upon realizing without his key to controlling the masses he's nothing instead of N like Hildred did. Not to say N doesn’t have his own lingering issues from all this, but unfortunately Hildred ended up dying in the asylum where I’m sure Louis wished (after offering several times) he could have helped him. At least Hilbert / Hilda may stand a chance.

[commsroom]

OK I need you to point me to the nearest entry point into this fandom. I don’t know what this is, but you popped up on my dash.. and I need to know what this is. Please lead the way.

oh!! that's exciting. yes. okay!! wolf 359 is a science fiction audio drama about the isolated and questionably competent crew of a deep space research station, the u.s.s. hephaestus. the initial four characters are comms officer doug eiffel, 'everyman' pop culture guy who really, really hates his job; commander minkowski, who cares about her job and the rulebooks that come with it a little too much, and desperately wants to feel like she's keeping everything under control; dr. hilbert... eccentric? station medical officer and mad scientist whose methods and mission objectives are not entirely above board; and hera, the station's mother program, who struggles with her job and the ways she's perceived by others.

there are other characters who show up later - i would say only three of the above characters are "main" characters, while the actual fourth main character is introduced in s2 - but that requires way more context, and i don't want to get into spoilers, obviously.

wolf 359 is a character drama - it's my personal gold standard for character writing - and the brief descriptions i gave you are the most surface, surface level parts of them. the writers once said something about it, like... that they weren't interested in subverting typical sci-fi character archetypes so much as looking at them and asking "why would a real person behave that way?" and i think it really worked. whether i like them or not, they all feel like real people to me. it has great sound design and a lot of "physicality" in the performances for an audio-only show, which i think comes down to gabriel urbina's film background and the way the scripts are written and performed. (and alan rodi's incredible soundtrack and sense for music cues.) you can't see a lot of what's in the scripts, but they're acted out in a way that you can kinda feel it anyway. i love that.

here's a fan made trailer that i think captures a lot of the right energy. it's a show about a lot of things, but some of the primary themes are communication + music, and i think the collaborative nature of the show itself adds something very sincere to that. it's also about corporate and medical exploitation, resisting dehumanization, what makes us human, connection, identity and autonomy, guilt and accountability, the stories people tell themselves to justify who they are or what they feel it's necessary for them to do, and, of course, the enduring philosophical question: "what's wrong with handcuffs?"

you can check it out at the website i linked above, or anywhere you can listen to podcast feeds! it's free, but they added ads a few years ago, which i hate, so you can pay a dollar here for the ad-free feed if that'll make a big difference in your ability to enjoy it: https://www.patreon.com/Wolf359Radio

it's a sequential story, nothing you really need to know about listening order except that i recommend not skipping the mini episodes (they have important character context and are where they are in the feed for a reason) (with the exception of mission mishaps ones near the end; those are comedy bonus episodes you can listen to whenever) and that you should definitely watch the live show after ep 26 and listen to special episode change of mind between s3 and s4.

i also have a folder here of every recording script where i edited any parts that were different from the show's dialogue + added transcripts for the ones that didn't have available recording scripts, if that's something you'd find useful! i also recommend checking them out just to see what i mean about how they're written.

the first season is pretty short, so i'd say stick with it until at least episode 12/13 (two part finale) if you can - i love the first season, personally, but that's the point it really becomes serialized, and so that's where i think you can safely say if it's something that's going to capture your interest or not. ... and that's it! sorry this is kind of an essay, but i got excited about it. i hope you love the show, please keep me updated, and let me know if there's anything else!!

[spacefinch]

Cheren: i currently have 7 empty notebooks and i have no clue what to put in them. suggestions? Hilbert: put spaghetti in it Cheren: i am currently taking suggestions from everyone except for you Bianca: put spaghetti in it Cheren: i am currently taking suggestions from everyone except for the two of you Rosa: put spaghetti in it Cheren: i am no longer taking suggestions.

[thecomfywriter]

on this fine day I ask of thee: what would it take to give Hilbert a redemption arc? How would others react?

hi hello this is a very heavy ask for how delirious i currently am. yikes forever, let's see how coherently i respond.

day five of tcw's 12 days of askmas--hilbert's original ending [prev draft lore + headcanons]:

okay i'm going to yamble for a bit about the original (ogog draft) ending for tov+sai, originally called dragon adventure, because i think it's relevant to this question.

originally, hilbert's entire character arc WAS a redemption arc. the first chapter was called "the lost hero," and the reason why hilbert had sought alan out was because he was the only person who truly believed hilbert was capable of redemption. alan's entire "forgiveness to all" ideology was based on the idea that anyone was capable of overcoming their past by putting in the effort to redeem themselves from the damage inflicted onto others from their sins. that's why he invests so much into hilbert, and why hilbert strives to prove alan right. no one had ever had unshakeable faith in him like alan did before. he was hilbert's new moral compass, and the reason why hilbert called alan "erevana."

throughout the entire ogog draft, you read the book strictly through alan's pov (except the first chapter which is hilbert's), and you watch him grow emotionally attached to hilbert, especially since the stronger their bond got, the more hilbert was changing.

he was becoming kinder, especially to caramel. he got a real job. started helping around the community. tried to right his wrongs however he could, no matter how humiliating. and it made the theme of the story lean towards "redemption is possible" for the entire journey.

but then the warehouse scene happens, and for a brief moment, when caramel accidentally hurts alan while trying to protect him, you see hilbert's entire demeanor change. when he thought alan's life was in danger, he snapped and became vile again. it was only for a brief moment, and the moment alan had gotten better, he apologized to both of them for his sudden regression, and even bowed. and alan is convinced the stress of the situation caused a lapse in character, just for a brief moment.

that is, until the climax happens. the second incident starts, and rather than fulfil his promised duty like he had sworn to alan he would, hilbert tries to run away again.

once more, he prioritized his own safety over soilaila's. once more, he abandoned everyone to let them rot. and once more, when confronted about it, the vileness of his character broke the facade that was alan's unreliable narration, as he finally realizes that hilbert had never changed--he had just hidden himself in plain sight. he was irredeemable because he was rotten to the core. and in that moment, after the rosiness leaves his vision, alan's entire ideology around forgiveness and redemption changes, as he adopts the new idea that, "once a sinner, always a sinner." once a change had occurred, it was irreversible. and that is why, once alan crosses a line during the second incident to save everyone's life, he accepts that momentary unethical part of himself as a character change, and succumbs to it. he believes he is incapable to reverting back to who he was before that change, and thus, adopts a new fragmented identity of himself and his morality.

--

i know that wasn't the ask, but my point of bringing up the original ending is to illustrate how no matter what version of tov i write, hilbert will never have a redemption arc. because no part of hilbert is genuine enough to have a redemption arc. the only way for that to be possible is if the core part of his identity was not him anymore, in which case, i would be creating a new character capable of growing. if we are taking about hilbert limious as every draft has ever known him, this man is irredeemable, because he doesn't see himself as needing redemption. no matter how rotten he is, if he is powerful, then he is proud.

thanks for the ask, wyked!

-- the holiday limited-edition tag list --

@wyked-ao3 @an-indecisive-nerd @drchenquill

@paeliae-occasionally @theink-stainedfolk @inseasofgreen

@thelovelymachinery @the-letterbox-archives @illarian-rambling

@bunnymermaidwrites @the-golden-comet @sm-writes-chaos

@leahnardo-da-veggie @corinneglass

[please tell me if you don't wanna be tagged i promise i will stop 🥺]