#w359blogging

[equalseleventhirds]

oh no i'm thinking abt wolf 359 again and do u kno. do u know what i love about it. the twists, yes the plot twists but also the worldbuilding twists where we find out All Kinds Of Shit abt aliens and goddard and so on, right

the twists are.... they're absofuckinglutely buck wild, right? like, what the fuck, lovelace is an alien duplicate? the aliens want music? cutter and pryce are how old??? and yet, and yet, they make sense! they may be unexpected, but they mesh perfectly with where we've been, and they lend more to where we're going!

lovelace is a duplicate, and this explains so much about her story, and will also change her arc going forward. the aliens want music, and that's why the old music recordings, and that's why eiffel was chosen, and that's simultaneously incomprehensible and perfectly relatable and gives you this like, characterization of the dear listeners as not human at all and making VERY strange choices but still people and like you get it. and pryce and cutter just. explains goddard's whole Thing. explains why way back in s1 hilbert was ordered to prioritize alien life discovery above all else. explains what they want, what they're planning and why.

i just. so many things nowadays do a Twist for the sake of a twist, or will sacrifice cohesive worldbuilding for character arcs or vice versa, but w359 prioritizes both and does twists for the sake of story & characters and makes everything make sense. i just. god. the ending was so sad, right? but so damn satisfying bcos things Made Sense.

#w359blogging #.........was that the tag i was using idk #anyway. ppl talk abt wolf and i am.......... remember. #the show has flaws or w/e sure but the storytelling was GOOD

[equalseleventhirds]

anyway, continued the w359 relisten just a lil bit to calm down............... marcus cutter has the most fucking evil style & panache. he is chilling at the top of the podcast villain game. hell, he is at the top of the villain game. like idk who the best villain of all time is but marcus cutter is Up There on style points alone.

#w359blogging #the genuine cheerfulness overlaying this sinister air... the way you know he knows everything but u keep lying desperately........ #and he lets you. just for a bit. bcos for now... for NOW... it's convenient. or fun. or just mildly interesting enough that he'll let you. #the fact that his threats are totally fucking implausible and delivered in this chipper lil voice #and yet deep down you have this horrible feeling that he would follow through PRECISELY #yeah. yeah this motherfucker has FLAIR.

[equalseleventhirds]

also (w359 spoilers ahead), marcus cutter is a stand-out villain bcos like, u kno that writing advice that goes 'everyone feels justified in their actions so u have to make a Justification for your villain doing evil', but ppl keep doing those villains wrong (i have Thoughts on why but that's another post)

cutter, like, we understand his motivations. we know he was wronged in his youth! we can see some sympathy there! and we can see his goal is what he genuinely thinks of as a Better Humanity.

and yet we are not pulled into 'well he's right he's just Using The Wrong Methods'. we can also see how what he believes is wrong, even tho he's twisted it around to think it's right. we can see where a lot of his goals are mostly about making things better for himself, even as he pushes a line of 'for progress! moving forward!' along with those self-interested goals. and, vitally, he's not up against heroes who are trying to ~keep the status quo~ or w/e, or go sadly 'well because of your Methods we cannot accept your Very Good Goal'

he's a very good example of a villain with a reason, a plausible reason, an at times sympathetic reason, but with whom we do not side, and who also gets to be campy and evil and fun.

#w359blogging #i think one of the major failings of ppl taking the 'give villains a justification' advice and doing it wrong #is that they assume 'justified' means 'sympathetic' but like. VERY sympathetic. #unfortunately if a villain is TOO sympathetic we the audience... stop liking the heroes #ppl don't necessarily... like to feel conflicted abt good vs evil in media. this is why sometimes Just Evil Villains succeed so well #bcos the 'give villains a justification' thing is about adding realism to your writing #but sometimes audiences don't want realism. they want to feel GOOD when the villain is taken down. #(not all the time. some ppl like the conflict. but also some media is so damn bad at doing a Properly Conflicted Thing #like? black panther? did great on 'good motive bad methods' bcos the good motive was CONTINUED by the good guys #other media... says 'good motive bad methods' and dismisses the motive entirely bcos of the methods #no one can ever take up that cause again without being tarred by the same brush (is the message of the story) #and that's uhhhhhh rly shitty writing and also NOT a good way to feel conflicted abt the heroes & villains for the audience #bcos either they must hate the villain's good motivation or they have to like. question the heroes. .......anyway.) #this is all to say! cutter's a fantastic balance between 'understandable motivations' and 'just genuinely evil u can root for him to fail' #like you UNDERSTAND him but you don't AGREE with him. he's got the realism without that ethical quandary. #it's not the same approach to an understandable villain as black panther but it is a good one for a different message #....................i said these thoughts were another post. they are instead tags. sorry about that.

[equalseleventhirds]

lovelace also has the BEST cool action hero lines. like, eiffel thinks he can do cool lines by quoting from stuff? but he is not cool action hero. minkowski is a cool action hero, but she only sometimes does Quippy Lines.

lovelace tho....... oh she's got the cool action hero lines. she is the coolest.

#w359blogging

[equalseleventhirds]

i mean like, listen, i know we all point out the 'cutter can catch bullets' thing as a last-second totally bonkers plot twist, but

that little 'i can, of course, catch bullets'? it is so utterly in character for him to have asked pryce to give him that capability. like, not even a thing he has to do a lot, just because he feels like it! because he thinks it'd be useful and maybe even fun! and the last-minute reveal, playful and threatening? also perfectly in character.

but it also sets up the upcoming fight, explains why they can't just shoot him, gives him time to activate the thingy to control lovelace (and him prolonging that is also totally in character) and brings us to lovelace's 'i don't need you to be' and then the harpoon, which are both lovely nods to past stuff and exceedingly dramatic (like, visually dramatic in an audio medium, and they communicate it so well)

it's an absolutely nonsense plot twist but it works it meshes with things so well it's not just There to be there it's like, there for reasons. love it.

#w359blogging #your twist MUST serve a purpose even if the purpose is small #i just. there's gotta be understandable background to it #so your audience doesn't necessarily see it coming but they DO see where it came from afterwards #and it's gotta. there's gotta be payoff for it. there's GOTTA be somewhere to go from it #and that somewhere should also make sense with the previous stuff

[equalseleventhirds]

specimen 34 my beloved........

#i love a plant monster! love a plant monster. #w359blogging #here a tag just in case

[equalseleventhirds]

i promise i don't do tma crossovers with everything, but (wolf spoilers ahead) also isabel lovelace is end-aligned. i've rambled abt this before, but other w359/tma mashups make her stranger bcos she's a copy......... no.......... no. inexorable, unstoppable, undying, back from the dead, 'run. and. hide.' isabel lovelace? isabel lovelace who has watched so many die and yet cannot stay dead herself? isabel lovelace who will bring doom unto those who think they are untouchable, immortal?

end aligned.

#w359blogging

[equalseleventhirds]

LOVELACE TIME

#w359blogging #'what did you say? no THIS is the commander of the hephaestus' oh darling..........

[equalseleventhirds]

eiffel in episode 17: i'm not going to get more paranoid, i'm maxed out on how worried i can get about this whole thing

me, looking at the upcoming 44 (and then some) episodes: .........well,

#w359blogging #aw bud........... aw bud.

[equalseleventhirds]

jdklfjds lovelace being like 'we were on radio silence for the whole mission'

meanwhile in change of mind everybody made fun of lambert for doing his checks for alien life......... lovelace. lovelace i adore u but come on.

#w359blogging #it is possible that that was not a memory precisely #but also it's rly funny if they were on radio silence EXCEPT lambert's checks................ and she forgot them. #well. funny and also sad.

[equalseleventhirds]

empty! man! time!!

#w359blogging #this is not a horror show. but also: this is a horror episode.

[equalseleventhirds]

theater! kid! minkowski!!

#w359blogging #when she is doin the pirates of penzance thing............. yeah. #every podcast needs at least one theater kid lbr

[equalseleventhirds]

eiffel is like 'huge fan' when he meets lovelace.... doug u don't even know. u don't KNOW. i am a bigger fan of her than u doug.

#w359blogging #fjdsklfdsj i'm being silly but YEAH

[equalseleventhirds]

'please handle with care and with a vague feeling of existential dread' is in fact how to approach wolf 359

#w359blogging #love that it was abt dinosaur bones. also love how applicable it is to this show.

[equalseleventhirds]

when lovelace is like 'you are so bad at everything that you have all this competence stored up inside you to be used on this one thing, that's definitely how that works' fdjskljfdskl she's so motivational and she's so very, very wrong...

#w359blogging #i mean eiffel fixes things eventually but fkdjslk not bcos of that!

[equalseleventhirds]

hm. u kno my w359 post-canon fic that doesn't exist where copies of eiffel, kepler, fourier, and eris wake up on a copy of the sol, just bcos i think it would be Fun & Funky Fresh (read: fascinating and potentially heartbreaking) for those four specifically to be in that situation?

the plant monster also is there. bcos it deserves to live, and i think the dear listeners Get That.

#w359blogging #yes i'm back on my relisten for a bit at work #minkowski commanding............ specimen 34 my beloved.......... #anyway fourier and eiffel band together to keep kepler from destroying it again #(he couldn't anyway he's got no authority and also no jacobi) #eris is busy pretending not to be eris but she supports them <3