#that's the doug eiffel experience.

[commsroom]

thinking about eiffel making hera a mixtape on cassette by recording over some old Goddard protocol tape he found in storage, but he doesn't have access to his tunes in a way he can transfer to a cassette recorder so it's just him singing out of key and getting lyrics wrong in a way that makes them more about Hera

this is soo sweet. he's such a massive ham; i love the idea of eiffel, like, dedicating the classical music they pick up to hera, or asking her to dance and dramatically - kind of awkwardly, in low gravity, but also just because he's not a very good dancer anyway - 'waltzing' with himself, or just... singing to her. pointing at her cameras. incredibly off-key. i love the thought of hera hearing some of those songs - the actual, non-eiffel versions - on earth for the first time, after all the times she's heard him singing them.

there's this interview gabriel urbina did a while back, where he was answering character-building questions, and said that eiffel once made someone a mixtape "in the way that only an obsessive 90s teenager can really make a mixtape"- like he really put effort into it, and really cared about it, and the person it was for didn't really appreciate it. and he never fully got over that. i think about that a lot, and how important music is to eiffel, how much is communicated through music... i think it would really mean a lot if hera could make a mixtape for him, someday. i think that's such a sweet sentiment, like a continuation of the way she gifts him music for his birthday.

[artful-peculiarities]

I’ve just had this really specific vision of post canon Doug Eiffel being a mechanic. Maybe even though his memories were drained from him, the movements of repair are still familiar, and I think it would also add something to his characterization once he’s back in earth with the others. I’m gonna think about this some more and come back to this post in a bit

[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

[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

[kitsuna21]

I literally love them

[hephaestuscrew]

We know very little about the childhoods of any of the Wolf 359 characters, but one of the few things we do know from canon is that Eiffel and Minkowski were both bullied as children (at least according to how I interpret Minkowski's speech from Shut Up and Listen, and Pryce telling Eiffel "Oh my, that was quite a beating Alison Thornton gave you. Second grade was not a happy time, was it?" in the finale). Which is unfortunately not unusual enough to be surprising, but is still a sad thing to have in common.

[godsjoke]

I do think that the crew in wolf would have a lot of scars and shit like when Eiffel got blown up from Lovelace’s bomb he would have like mad burn scars and he would have scars around his fingernails too I think he would have lots and loads of scars all over including from his car crash.

When Kepler got his hand incinerated off he’d have crazy like fire and acid burns all up his arm all the way up to his shoulder blade. He would also have a lot of scars like really deep ones all over.

I think that Lovelace and Jacobi would have some too but different kinds, Lovelace would have like blunt force scars and Jacobi obviously has a lot of bomb scars.

I’m not really sure if Minkowski would have a lot but I’m sure she would have some probably most of them would be from Eiffel doing goofy shit lol and ig some from Hilbert’s experiments but when Eiffel just casually mentioned how he didn’t mean for Hilbert to have to amputate those toes like 👀👀 sir whattt lmao.

Hilbert 👏👏 this man would be COVERED in scars like how some people are covered in tattoos but with scars. The amount of people that would have put out a hella fight before he brutally murdered them this man is made of scars both from his childhood but also by his fucking drive to just keep on trucking along with his shit <33 what a trooper 🤭

What are y’all’s theory’s do you think they have scars if so where and how do you think they acquired them??

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

Post-canon Doug Eiffel is a topic I think about A Lot but the final lines of the show, “Am I still Doug Eiffel?” / “Want to find out together?” so strongly imply that he gets to choose who he is going to become, his past doesn’t have to define him, and being Doug Eiffel is as much a social experience of being prt of a crew, a team, a family, as it is about being one person—over the course of the podcast he becomes the person he is because of his friends and his place in the crew. Being you is a choice but it’s also a fact of your embeddedness in your social relations. He didn’t become the Doug Eiffel we knew and loved on his own—he wouldn’t have had the chance to. And whoever he becomes in the future it will be with the love and support and relationships with Minkowski, Hera, and Lovelace.

… and where does that leave post-canon Miranda?

Is she still Miranda Pryce? Who will give her the community to find out? In what context, with what relationships, will she become? Minkowski (and Hera and Lovelace) don’t have much desire to find out together, with her. And like, there is A Lot Of Very Understandable Trauma there, but Miranda doesn’t know what it is.

Is she still Miranda Pryce? Who’s going to give her the support to decide not to be?

[nobodysdaydreams]

Any one or more of these that you'd like to answer for any of the characters I'd love to see! Hope you're doing well with finals <3

Doug Eiffel, Daniel Jacobi, Nicholas Benedict, & Dr. Garrison

6. What's something you have in common with this character?

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

Thank you, Sophie! So many fun questions! Let's see... where to begin.

Doug Eiffel

6. What's something you have in common with this character? We both have very bad ADHD. I don't know if there's a character I've related to as strongly as Doug Eiffel for that specific purpose. I'll have to pull together a list of all the ADHD characters I related to someday.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character? He gets to see his daughter Anne again. After all this time he deserve a chance to make things right. His daughter needs her dad to come home and give her a hug.

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire? I love Doug's friendship with Hera and Minkowski. They all care for each other so much despite their differences and they survive because they rely on and care for each other.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like? I love writing about Doug's new life experiences on Earth without his old memories. Reinventing himself, finding himself again. However, I don't like the fact that I haven't had time to write a ton of Wolf359 in a while. Why must my ideas be so ambitious? 😭

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now? First impressions, ngl, I judged Doug a bit for his need to make jokes and be at the center of attention and apparent lack of regard for the feelings and concerns of others, until I realized the reason I didn't like him were because he reminded me of my own flaws. But we learn and we grow, and Doug certainly did. Very proud of him.

Daniel Jacobi (aka Duck Boy 🦆)

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like? This is gonna sound bad, but affectionately bully him a little bit. Even though I really came around to this character, he really needed to get it together. Glad he finally did!

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character? I have several head canons that I really need to start writing more about, one of them being that Jacobi and Maxwell have similar broken relationships with their families (for some similar and dissimilar reasons) and that's part of what drove them to become friends. Also that duck imprinting on Jacobi fic (it will take a while to get there but I have ideas)

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire? Jacobi and Maxwell's friendship. I know people talk a lot about Jacobi and Kepler, but he was a horrible boss and their relationship had a huge toxic power imbalance (though I begrudgingly came around on Kepler too, oh if only Whiskey Boy could have gotten there sooner). But you can tell Jacobi actually cares about Maxwell. She's possibly the only character he not only cares about but believes in. Jacobi knows Kepler is full of it (though his thoughts about Kepler being full of it certainly increase after Maxwell's death, he knows to some extent Kepler's kind of a jerk), but you can tell he believes in Maxwell. He justifies all the horrible things he does because he says they allow people like her to do her job. He sees her potential to do good and wonderful things and realizes just how much is lost when she dies (and later on, how much was really lost by having her work at Goddard when her work could have gone to so many better things). He sees his own goodness as only being an extension of protecting and helping her. When she dies, Jacobi just becomes the guy who explodes things and kills people. You see the toll that takes on him. It's also nice to see Maxwell caring for Jacobi before she died. You can tell she sees the potential he has for goodness despite the fact that Jacobi can't see it in himself.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now? Y'all already know I had some negative words to say about this man (he deserved it), but I went from bullying Duck Boy to affectionately bullying him, and I loved his arc! We love to see redemption.

Nicholas Benedict

6. What's something you have in common with this character? Being neurodivergent, relying on friends and family, and especially the show version and the way he reacts to situations. Oh my brother is the evil guy who wants to kidnap me? Let me hop into a row boat I'll give him something to kidnap! He's very distractable and the inattentive ADHD is easy to see but those big emotions and impulsivity slip out every now and again and that's something I very much relate to.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like? I love that we all recognize and agree that he is an amazing mentor figure and cares so much about his family. I know that sounds cliched but its so wholesome.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character? SO MANY and in the interest of not spoiling my own fic, I'm just gonna say that he's been through so much, but has chosen, in spite of it all, to chose to be good and be better, and I greatly admire that.

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire? His relationship with his daughters (Number Two, Rhonda, and Constance). You can tell he loves these girls and they are his family, blood related or not. It's delightfully wholesome.

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to this character? Something you don't like? I'll do the fic reading question for Nicholas, because I love when fics understand Nicholas. He might not be super athletic and might rely on his friends a lot, but that does not mean he's incapable or blind to who his brother is. Nicholas knows Nathaniel, he knows how controlling, manipulative, and slimy he is, heck, that's the whole reason he left when he was a kid. Nicholas knows Nathaniel has all sorts of traps for him, he's not stupid. He just loves his brother and believes in him and is willing to take risks to get him back (and it paid off 🥹🥰). Something I don't like is when Nicholas is portrayed as dumb or incompetent for believing in Nathaniel or forgiving him (not that Nathaniel wouldn't have consequences- that's part of the redemption process- but I don't like it when people try to say that Nicholas was wrong to want to get his brother back or somehow betrayed his friends by doing so even though Nicholas was firm in condemning Nathaniel for his treatment of the children and others).

Dr. Garrison

6. What's something you have in common with this character? Women in STEM. Mental health issues. Science. Psychology. Neuroscience. That about sums it up. I really wish we could have learned more about her backstory, what she wants, and what led her to work for Curtain.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like? Explore her backstory and complex relationship with Curtain and other characters. If the show wouldn't do it, then we can! I mean, they teased it a bit in season 2, but like...give us more!

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character? You already know. Here, let me just...there we go. But to summarize, she's an orphan, cares about others but has trauma and her own goals that frequently get in the way of that, she once had a better relationship with Curtain and several other characters, and she struggled with alcoholism and depression at several points in her life.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like? Give her angst and complexity. She's a villain, don't get me wrong, but there's so much to her, and I just want to give her a hug. I have no idea if this was where they were going with her in the show, but I love writing it. I'm glad I was able to do that in SOS because I don't like the idea of writing her off as a side character when I think she has a lot more to offer.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now? At first, being a books fan, I wondered why the show had so much of her, and at first thought it was to better characterize Curtain and his complex and weird relationship with his employees and pathological need to be liked and have the appearance of friends. But then, season 2, when they revealed she built the inventions and was working with Curtain for the money...and is apparently aware of the existence of psychics (as was Curtain at one point)...like girl, WHAT HAPPENED? I didn't go this direction in SOS, but I would not be surprised if had the show continued, the research Curtain, SQ's birth parents, Garrison, and Milligan were doing together had something to do with psychics, which would have tied nicely into the whole "where are Constance's birth parents?" plotline. Will I incorporate any of that into my fic? Haha...no spoilers. 😉

Thanks for the ask Sophie! 🥰