#that's the doug eiffel experience.

[emp-t-man]

hey wolf 359 nation we talk a lot about jacobi having to listen to his own voice screaming for help as he’s burned alive but i think it’s also fun to think about how eiffel not only watches lovelace’s head get blown clean off right next to him, probably close enough to get some of her blood on himself, but he also watches cutter snap his neck. Jacobi had to listen to himself be murdered, but eiffel had to watch.

[commsroom]

it's true that sometimes people will soften eiffel, forget that he's kind of a dick, and play up the more good-natured, goofier aspects of his personality while downplaying how self-centered he is and the amount of undeniable Cis Guy Behavior he is known to display. but his character arc only works the way it does because he is, despite everything, very lovable - it's there in how minkowski's reaction to eiffel's conviction is set up to mirror the expected audience reaction, and desire to believe the best in him. wolf 359 captures something very real in eiffel that i've never seen as authentically represented anywhere else: a sincere, kindhearted man who still perceives himself as the default type of person, who wants to do right by people, but perpetuates harm through selfishness and ignorance. he's held to account for it, but isn't condemned. it matters that he improves because the people holding him to account are doing it out of care for him, because they want him to be better, and to be in their lives.

[lysolbabey]

i love wolf 359 fan art because most artists have very different views of the characters so almost all designs are unique but you can always tell which one is eiffel because 9 times out of 10 he is wearing this shirt

[coffee-is-my-oxygen]

Dear listeners of Wolf 359, how long did it take you to listen to the entire podcast?

I listened to it in 3 days and let me tell you it was an EXPERIENCE. I forgot about reality and my existence. The existential crisis I had afterwards was intense

[specialagentartemis]

moving here instead of continuing this conversation in the replies of kat's post but YES the severance crew's increasingly desperate and longshot attempts to escape the perpetual workplace while people on the outside think things are normal keeps making me think of wolf 359... like yeah that also happened to my buddies eiffel, hera, minkowski and lovelace!! and the music dance experience feels like the exact thing goddard would do to boost flagging morale😔

hahahaha god. They ABSOLUTELY would!

The corporate culture of Lumon in Severance is fairly similar in quite a few ways to the corporate culture of Goddard—they’re doing the same kind of parody/commentary. Of “work life/work family,” where there’s this jovial paternalistic attitude by Mr. Milchik or Mr. Cutter towards their employees who only get addressed by first name… the absurd sci-fi horror aspect plays really well in this space!

And, well, we’re speculating that Lumon wants to do something regarding immortality or rebirth…

Also. My vision for a Wolf 359/Severance crossover involves,

Minkowski is the head of the Hephaestus project. What is the Hephaestus project? They don’t know. However. One day they find a wild-eyed woman living in the endless hallways of the Lumon building. Her name is Isabel L., she’s the head of the Hephaestus project, and Lumon killed her whole team.

“I couldn’t leave,” Isabel says. “If I left, they would never bring me back. And I would never remember them. There’s nobody who remembers or cares about them except for me. And I’m not leaving until I make Goddard pay for what they did.” She glares daggers at Alex H. “Of course they kept you on. I can’t believe they already hired a new team. Just like Goddard, right? And just like you to not even care. Tell me they re-severed you or something, tell me you’re not this callous. Three days and every trace of Sam and Mace and Victoire and Kuan is completely gone, it’s like they never even existed at all—“

“Wait,” says Doug E., sometimes called Dougie Fresh (by him) (no one else calls him this), “There was a whole ‘nother Hephaestus project this whole time, and they all got killed three days ago, and we didn’t hear anything about this?”

“You wouldn’t have,” Isabel says impatiently. “You’re new. They cleared out Sam’s desk and gave it to you. He used to sit right here.”

“Uh,” Doug says. “I’ve been sitting at this desk for two years.”

Isabel stops. “What?”

“Isabel,” Alex H. says, “how long have you been down here?”

She’s starting to get distressed. “Three days? Four? I didn’t leave work when I was supposed to, I ran into the halls and hid down near the goats—“

(“The what?” asks Renée.

“Oh man right, the goats,” Doug says.

“There are goats here,” adds Hera. “We went exploring last week because after the whole, y’know, I decided if I’m gonna be stuck here forever I want to know everything in this place.”

“You’re not stuck here forever, you go home every day,” Renée says, but something about the woman in front of her who clearly did not go home is making it sound especially hollow.)

Isabel stares at them all. The timeline is not adding up. She turns to face Alex H., the only face she recognizes.

“Isabel,” he says, “the liquidation of the first Hephaestus project was two years ago.”

There’s silence. Then Isabel’s voice, wavering, and smaller now, “No. No, it’s only been three days… four days… it can’t have been more than that.”

“I’ve been the head of the Hephaestus project for the last two years,” says Renée. “Right here.”

The whole team suddenly has much bigger questions to answer than they thought.

[raisedbyheathens]

So there's this guy, Arthur Lester, the painfully skinny Brit with temper issues and a codependent relationship with a eye god; you know, like Jonathan Sims, the guy who needs to get traumatized repeatedly for a particular experiment to work correctly; you know- like Warren Godby, who is part of an experiment he did not truly consent to and doesn't at all understand; you know, like Doug Eiffel, the entire communications department in a completely bug nuts, out of control locked room mad house; you know, like Dr. Edmund Harley, the smooth voiced radio guy reporting on *deeply weird* shit who is in love with a scientist; you know, like Cecil Palmer the guy with all the tentacle fan art; you know like Arthur Lester.

Well jesus wept. When you've got a type... I guess you've got a type.

[bearloonz]

What Is Wolf 359 anyway ? Is it like a podcast ? And could you tell me all your favorite parts about it in great detail because it sounds really interesting and I trust your opinion :]

sits down across the table from you and slams a briefcase on the table so heavy it breaks it in half. Hey.

Wolf 359 is an audio podcast that came out in 2014. It opens up by asking the question “Would that be fucked up or what?” and its answers are really funny until they aren’t. Classic case of the funny story slowly becoming painfully real and dangerous for the protagonists.

The basics of the plot is a crew of three people plus their space station’s AI are sent to orbit a star lightyears away from earth by some totally suspicious corporation. The show introduces you right in the middle of the mission, when everyone’s already been out there for months, so they’ve sort of abandoned decorum for gassing each other with chemicals as a solution for workplace discourse. I will put my in depth thoughts under a cut because frankly, I would very very much like you to check out this podcast, because I like it a lot and want to see more people talking about it. Stick through at least season one and the beginning of season 2, it’s about a dozen episodes and it’s a quick listen to help you decide if you want to keep checking it out.

ok so my favorite things about it (non spoilers edition.)

-Really solidly written female characters. Like it’s genuinely enjoyable how much they share the same narrative weight as the male characters especially for a 2014 podcast.

-Character focused podcast 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶 I love a story that is first and foremost about dissecting characters and their actions and I think Wolf 359 excels in this section of its writing. Doug Eiffel is a wonderful adventure in finding out what happens when a comedic relief character is confronted with being more than just his archetype.

-Ai storyline. Do you like robots? You should like my friend Hera. Everything happens to her. She sees everything all of the time, she knows so much more than you do, and she is physically unable to insult you to your face but I think she should do it anyways. I like. Her. She gets to get up to weird gay people stuff with a character that shows up later on and it leaves her changed in so many ways.

-Fucked up little scientist that I like. He’s Russian and you should listen to the podcast for the sole experience of comparing his voice in ep 1 to any ep in season 3. It’s funny.

ok specifics under the cut if you dare to hear my detailed thoughts before listening to the podcast

-Doug Eiffel’s character is genuinely one of the most interesting things to me. I talked about it in an older textpost but I love how Wolf 359 is a media not unfamiliar with immoral and nuanced characters and chooses to make sure that applies to not just its antagonists. The reveal in season 3 that he was a dad? And he like? Brutally impacted his kids life forever because of His Own shitty mistakes? And now he has to deal with that forever? Big. Massive even. Also part of the reason I have such a gripe with the finale of the show but it’s okay I think the show itself is still really worth it in spite of my mixed feelings on season 4.

-Isabel. ISABEEEEEEL. Isabel Lovelace is really good and the entirety of minisode 4 (I believe it’s 4?) kills me dead. She’s died not once, but twice! And lived! She’s tormented! She’s miserable! She’s the final girl! she’s a clone! She’s the original! I need to finish my relisten so I can get as weird about her as possible because fuck me does she have a fascinating storyline.

-That fuckass scientist. Hilbert. Heart. I can and have gone into depth about him before because I hate him. He’s like, peak for me vis a vis Wolf 359 and character dissection. Hes a horrible horrible man but the way he justifies his actions and how he views himself and what exactly his apathy is driven by fascinates me. This man died at 6 years old and has spent the rest of his life dragging the dead weight of his own corpse around while he works toward his unreasonable goals. I love him.

-Lovelace and Hilbert have a shared connection from before canon that makes me insane in a way I literally cannot describe. Type of dynamic that makes you so fucking nuts that I don’t just need you to hear me I need someone to grab at my brain and match my freak. I need more people to talk about them. They were friends and then they were enemies and also they understand each other more than anyone else. He killed her entire crew, but he’s the only member of her crew that’s left. He’s everything she lost and he’s all she has. She came back to tell him he isn’t allowed to forget what he did this time. They haunt each other. Blow them up now.

-Marcus Cutter is a deeply unsettling little man and I find him fascinating.

[socksenjoyer]

how i think wolf 359 characters would dress in their normal lives because nobody asked (no spoilers just characters you won't have heard of):

Doug Eiffel: self-explanatory. worst fashion sense ever. has to be coerced into not wearing a graphic tee to weddings. i think he'd love hair clips and bracelets and stuff tho

Renée Minkowski: Butch bi. INVENTED the jumpsuit-vest combo

Alexander Hilbert: Resents needing to pick his own clothes. I cannot imagine this man without a lab coat on. Thinks two identical shirts is enough to own

Isabelle Lovelace: I think she'd like quite light but practical clothes. I can very easily imagine her with a hawaiian shirt, and i think she'd enjoy fun patterns. She would love maya kern skirts with the massive pockets.

Hera: (Not sure if she can actually change her clothes but if she could) Has a lot of fun with it. None of it seems to match but it always works. If she could, she'd be the kind of person to put keyrings on EVERYTHING. Just so many accessories. If she ever found out about decora i think she'd explode with joy

Jacobi: pretty regular fashion, but i think he'd mend his clothes in very visible ways. some of his clothes are more mend than fabric. It looks sick as hell. I want to draw this now

Maxwell: Goth. Most of her outfits are pretty lowkey apart from the occasional elaborate tradgoth look. I refuse to explain myself. Also stop drawing her with glasses just because she's smart

Kepler: Not quite sure as I'm not a massive kepler fan. Start drawing this guy with glasses tho. i imagine him a little bit like Nash from street fighter before all the cool science experiment frankenstein shit and also less buff so make of that what you will

As for all the goddard management...idk. i don't know them well enough and frankly i hate them so much. Cutter has never worn anything less formal than a suit in his life tho he sleeps like that. And lovelace's crew...i love them but i don't know shit about them 😔 sorry guys. I'll get back to you about them

[flame-cat]

"What? No, Eiffel, we're not-"

"No? And why not? It seems like the most viable option we have right now!"

"Because that's stupid! And reckless! It's-"

"It's the best chance we have with the lowest collateral damage. Acceptable losses!"

"Acceptable-? … What?"

"I'll put it in a way you can understand- I'm using the data we already have. You guys got on fine without me when… you guys were fine. We lose you, we have no commanding officer. We lose Lovelace, we lose the most badass, strategically minded female John McClane you've ever met. We lose Hera- well, we kinda can't, because we did once and we all nearly died from exhaustion. You lose me? Well… you lose me. It just makes sense."

"… Eiffel… that has got to be the stupidest thing you've ever said. Acceptable losses? Are you kidding me? 'You got on fine without me?' No, we didn't! It was horrible! We were falling apart without you! Don't you dare assume you can just- just throw yourself away because you think we don't care! I already lost you once, Doug, I refuse to do it again!"

There is a long, tense silence while that sinks in.

"… So…" Maxwell clears her throat from behind the DM screen. "I think that's enough for one night. How about we hand out experience points next session?"

[annabelle--cane]

upon arriving in night vale and getting a feel for the surroundings:

doug eiffel - starts crying

sister carpenter - gets annoyed at the lack of options on the moonlite all-night diner menu

gordon porlock - is more thrilled than words can describe

david 7 - winds up as an nvcr intern. I'm so sorry.

arkady patel - honestly feels disappointed, somehow

alestes triceforgotten - experiences a category five "why is the ocean so far away :(" event, is not fazed by anything else

sir caroline - isn't happy at all but shrugs it off and goes job hunting

gloria midnightburger - adapts like an absolute champ. makes friends with the faceless old woman who secretly lives in her home.

david ward - also starts crying but is gradually filled with a sense of blinding euphoria at the realization that hey this fucked up evil city actually seems kinda fun

gaius octavius - swallows his almost overpowering fear and tries and fails to fill the mayoral power vacuum. dies shortly thereafter.

[emp-t-man]

wait okay gonna be cringe rq

speaking of my bf i’m visiting him rn and i met all his college friends last night bc they host game night on the weekends and like. i’d only ever been called doug by people online?? like no one has said that to my face but my bf apparently uses it interchangeably when talking abt me and one of his friends called me by that name. all. night. and when i say the EUPHORIA??? like HELLO

[commsroom]

people are always making the "guy watching his second movie" joke about post-canon eiffel, but the literal only movie hera has ever seen is home alone 2. girl who's only seen home alone 2, watching her second movie: getting a lot of home alone 2 vibes from this

[box953]

What do you think Hilbert would do if he survived and got to return to Earth with everyone? Considering the fact that, had he lived, he would’ve found out that Decima wasn’t working (yet?), and it was actually Lovelace’s alien blood that gave Eiffel those regenerative powers (fingernails growing back and such) AND that Pryce and Cutter were going to use his virus to wipe out the entire population of Earth.

Would that be enough for him to break down and give up on his life’s work? (If so, what alternate career paths do you envision for Hilbert? (That one I’m asking because it’s fun to imagine him as a gardener or high school chemistry teacher; but also: how would he make sense of his life now? When he can’t in any way pretend that all the sacrifices were worth it?) Or would the alien blood thing just give him new ideas for how to improve the virus?

(Of course, with these questions I am assuming that despite Kepler officially pulling the plug on project Decima (and Hilbert seemingly accepting that, even if only because acceptance is “what’s necessary to survive”) and Hilbert choosing *helping the mutiny* over *transporting his brain back to Earth via the salami chair* - Hilbert didn’t actually give up on Decima, and would immediately resume the project if given the chance (or would just work very hard in order to get that chance.))

And what does Lovelace do when they get back to Earth? Re: making him pay for what he did and all that.

i actually have a lot of thoughts about hilbert living long enough to realize all his work meant absolutely nothing. I answered an ask similar to this over here :)

Honestly, it feels like a good alternative end to his story where his work isnt forcefully ended because he died, but it still ends because he finally realizes his work is a lost cause. That truly no one believed in it and it has had essentially no results that weren’t just death. I want several decades of his misguided and harmful actions to catch up to him in one instant and cause him damage.

But like. I earnestly cant think of anything else he’d be doing back on earth. I can see him helplessly trying to keep ahold of his project and looking for resources but they just killed the people who were immoral and powerful enough to let him continue it. Imagining just like.. a slow degradation of his confidence over time.

As funny as the concept of him being a highschool teacher is, that feels like the last place he would go. Highschool classes generally feel like putting 25-30 Doug eiffels in one room and why would you do that to him, really.

and also like? I dont know if he has the qualifications to do any sort of job like that. I don’t know how easy it would be to find him any job. He’s not a real man, after all. He’s had his entire identity changed who knows how many times, and has done. So much. Illegal shit. Even if whatever’s going on at Goddard stays off record he still lived an entire life of experimenting with the decima project beforehand.

Maybe he gets a comfortable sum of money from Goddard futuristics (as id imagine they all do, when returning back to earth. As an ‘apology’ and a ‘please keep quiet about this’ thing.) and then he’s just living and doesn’t have to get a job or anything and he has no project left to dedicate his life to and now he just has to… live. And then there’s the crawling realization that he is not a person and he has no aspirations or goals or earnest hobbies or anything that can entertain a normal man living a normal life. I just think the idea of people who have sacrificed themselves for one goal, living long enough to move past that goal and realizing they have to keep living is very interesting to me. The concept of trying to be human again for the first time in a while. That’s more painful to me than dying in ignorance.

As for Lovelace, i think it’s important for her to realize that nothing she could do could harm Hilbert more than whatever he’s going through right now. I think it’s important that she just moves on even if Hilbert is still alive on this Earth. The podcast nods to unfortunate narrative parallels between these two, where she has more of Hilbert’s harshness and willing to do what ‘needs to be done’ with the si-5 than she’d like to admit. I feel like her moving on from a need for vengeance with Hilbert can be like her moving past those parallels, and just.. being a better person than he is.

And again, pertaining to my thoughts that Hilbert having to live with himself after losing his project is more of a painful end than dying, I think she could find a similar understanding that killing Hilbert would be a mercy. And he doesn’t deserve to die and to stop thinking about all the harm he’s done.

[maggotlands]

just got dealt 100 psychic damage by being reminded of doug eiffel's existance. good lird. good lirrrrrd i will never recover from wolf 359 yet i always forget about it for just long enough to experience a mental attack when im reminded.

[wolf359relisten]

EPISODE 1: SUCCULENT RAT-KILLING TAR

listen / transcript / recording script / wiki

"Our premiere episode. Officer Doug Eiffel, communications officer on board the U.S.S. Hephaestus Station, is willing to go to any lengths to procrastinate his work. Tasked with a pointless hunt for alien intelligence, Eiffel would much rather spend his time complaining about the station’s malfunctioning autopilot system and making sure his stash of contraband cigarettes doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. But when his instruments start picking up a mysterious radio signal from an unidentified source, Eiffel begins to wonder if someone - or something – could be trying to communicate with the Hephaestus. Plus, explosions, dangerous experiments,  non-destructive hair driers, handy-dandy tips for surviving in outer space, and creative interpretations for the word coffee."

August 15

[specialagentartemis]

Some more thoughts I've had about Wolf 359 Severance AU:

Renee Minkowski got the job at Goddard Futuristics after her beloved husband died in a car crash two and a half years ago. She was pretty wrecked by it, and first tried to keep pursuing her dream of being an astronaut, partially because she'd always wanted to but hadn't had the courage to pursue it and now she's like fuck it and partially to try and get away from everything for a while. But when she applied with Goddard's deep-space program, she was rejected. Again. It was crushing. But Mr. Cutter, who did the job interview, was so friendly, and made her feel so bad even though he of course didn't mean to, and he said a position was open on the Severed floor of the main Goddard headquarters, and the work is important, and if she's in-house then when there are more astronaut jobs then maybe she'll look better to the hiring committee, and she was feeling like such a mess that she agreed. And she thinks it's helped, sort of. She tries not to stress about what she's doing down there. She still feels like she's failed at the American Dream.

(She still isn't wholly convinced that Dominik's death was an accident. He was an investigative reporter. She wants to believe in Goddard but she also keeps having these doubts creep in that she is trying so so so hard to ignore. Severance was supposed to help, not introduce new doubts.)

innie!Renee is industrious and likes being a leader, feeling like she's leading a team and doing something Important. What is the job? She doesn't know. But it has to be important, and that's why it's so mysterious. Right?

Doug E. thinks they're parsing through SETI signals looking for aliens. Renee keeps saying they're not looking for aliens. Doug says how do you know. She doesn't, but that would be stupid, and the work is important, so it can't be that. Right?

outie!Doug Eiffel is still a felon whose prison sentence was bought by Goddard for labor and experimentation. innie!Eiffel does not know this.

Alex H. is quiet and studious. outie!Hilbert was a scientist working for Goddard until he Fucked Up and was reassigned to the Severed floor in order to keep his job. Hilbert goes along with this because he thinks that if he gets back in Goddard's good graces they'll let him keep doing his research. (They are totally using and abusing his research and his innie doesn't know this.)

Hera...

Hera P. wakes up on a table.

A voice comes through the intercom.

This feels wrong.

This is backwards.

She's clumsy. Her body doesn't feel right.

She meets the Hephaestus team. She does not want to be here. She tries to escape. It does Not work. She has a bad attitude about it. She wants to not do any work - "ohhhh what are they gonna do, fire me?" - but parsing data feels... good, actually. She doesn't know how to interpret the pain in her abdomen (sometimes it's hunger. sometimes it's needing to pee. She isn't actually positive how to, like... deal with either of those things? Renee and Doug are kind of worried about her and develop a protective attitude towards her - clearly something went wrong during severance, they fucked something up in her brain somehow.) But refining data is something she's good at.

Mysteries and tensions rise until 1) Doug finds something in the data he was not supposed to know and Alex H. freaks out and they learn that Alex has never actually been severed (they all end up lying about this to Administration), 2) they encounter Lovelace who has been living in the walls and talking about how Administration killed her previous team, and 3) they climactically discover that Hera P. is a clone of Dr. Miranda Pryce, the scientist who invented the severance procedure. She's an experiment. She was always an experiment. Hera was an AI that Pryce developed, and Hera P. is a clone of Pryce that she wanted to test not only severance but personality implantation in. Personality uploads haven't been perfected yet, but purely original digital AIs are something that Goddard does have now, and Hera was a particularly unruly one. Miranda's clone, probably just Miranda Jr., is obedient and probably traumatized, so testing the post-severance implantation of a known personality into a body whose biology, neurology, and genetics Pryce knows intimately is something Cutter and Pryce are both very interested in. Sever a person, then instead of allowing an innie personality to develop naturally, implant a new consciousness and see if it takes.

Hera is not, natively, human. She was not born in a human body and doesn't have human instincts. This body is not hers, she was just put in it. She is NOT happy about this.

(Though... my first idea was "clone," but Miranda Pryce just straight up experimenting on herself this way is ALSO a very compelling idea and more thematically resonant here. I'm just not sure if she would subject herself to it.)