Can I join? I came to like Ferriswheelshipping for a number of reasons/hints throughout the game, but here’s some of them (warning, I am about to ramble a LOT since I just played through the game again xD) --
The main thing I have to say overall, in addition to what people have said about Hilda being the one that changes N’s worldview (and could potentially teach him more as a sympathetic friend/love interest) is that throughout the game, while this big argument is going on between Team Plasma and the Gym Leaders and Cheren and other characters, there was this private dialogue between N and Hilda (or the male player character, but for this thread let’s say Hilda. N/Hilbert works too but I like Hilbert with Bianca, I think.) As the game progressed, yes, they were part of this larger debate too, but as things went on I began to feel that to the two of them, the answer that mattered most in this debate was the other person’s.
N desperately wanted Hilda to understand him and wished to test his beliefs against hers, as she was someone he came to respect and care about towards the end. Hilda wanted to help him and sway him away from his well-intentioned but misguided path because I think she recognized something special about him. While Team Plasma is clashing with Clay and Alder and other characters, N is taking Hilda away for one-on-one talks because she has become someone significant for him. There’s plenty o’ shipping material right there.
N obviously is going to be different and important from the start of the game. You see him aside from the crowd during Ghetsis’ speech in Accumula Town. He has a black baseball cap and the player has a white one—ying and yang theme much? Both become the heroes of the dragons and seem to be on opposing sides—yet Drayden and Iris say the dragons used to be a single pokemon and that they naturally get along. That seems to imply another sort of connection between N and Hilda as the chosen heroes of these two pokemon. Are they also meant to get along? Both with hearts kind to pokemon? Two of a kind? (Not to mention pink/red and green are complementary colors. Pink's just a lighter tint of red, and N's hair is a pretty light green at that. Hilda's hat, shoes, and bag have pink on them. x3 But anywho.)
I have to admit I didn’t find the actual ferris wheel scene that shippy. Don’t get me wrong, I think it was important for N—he was beginning to feel Hilda was significant, that she was different from the others, and sort of comes clean to her in that scene, admitting his true goals and allegiances. He doesn’t do that with any other character. But I’d say for Hilda, at least in my shoes, after he admits he’s Plasma’s King I began worrying I was going to be ambushed by Plasma grunts once we got to the bottom, or kidnapped by them for their plans. Yet I didn’t think for a second that N himself would harm Hilda. In fact, after that scene and the battle after, he never actually tries to get in Hilda’s way at all. He mostly encourages you, prompting you to try to follow after him if your convictions are true (and maybe he doesn't realize it, but I think he's trying to give you the chance to change him before he goes too far.)
N’s need to always talk to the player and sort of justify his feelings to her was a big hint along the way. He doesn’t feel compelled to do that with any other—just this kindred spirit he feels in Hilda. When he tells you his heart breaks a little, not just in general for kind trainers, but for ones specifically like you, I think I really began to think “okay, this guy likes her, even if he doesn’t really understand that he does.” In his own socially-unadjusted way. x3 You really begin to see that he means well, and even if he doesn’t really know how to talk to you, he wants to tell you how he feels in your one-on-one conversations.
Then in his Castle, I’d say his childhood room is a stronger moment for Hilda. She feels compassion and sympathy for him and maybe even anger on his behalf there, anger at Ghetsis for what he’s done to him. She wants to free him, let him see the good side of humans and the world. N tells you to heal up before you see him—and who are you healed by? Anthea, who tells you N knows in his heart by then that Plasma is wrong, but feels so conflicted that he must work out his feelings in battle with you. N sends you to her, perhaps not even knowing that she could tell you how he feels more clearly than he can.
The ending of the Plasma story clinches this shipping for me. Even though Plasma has “won” with N’s defeat of Alder, he goes against Ghetsis’ real wishes and allows you (and encourages you) to get the other dragon and come to meet him. Ghetsis doesn’t even believe the player CAN. N believes it strongly, saying he saw it in the future. He’s disappointed when you don’t have the dragon at first and don’t seem to be who he believed you were, and feels relieved when the dragon does appear (he also says he likes you a bit there, for added hints.) Having that battle with you was important to him. He needed to work that conflict out with you, with you as the only person who could help him see the truth. Alder's words to him fall on deaf ears, but you are the light that manages to break through and sway his feelings and beliefs for the better.
Then there’s also the part at the end where he encourages you to pursue your dreams, saying he believes if anyone could make their wishes come true, it’d be you. (What other “villain” cares what your dreams are?) He specifically asks her to wait after the Ghetsis battle so that they can speak alone (he also calls out her name in distress when Ghetsis said he was going to eliminate her, as if worried even though he is powerless to stop it when his pokemon are all fainted.) It’s pretty clear he really admires and cares for Hilda by then and wants her to have a good future. I don’t think he’s savvy enough with people to think that Hilda might want him to be any part of that future though (as a friend or eventually more), and probably doesn’t see himself as part of it despite liking her. It makes for a pretty tragic ending to Black/White. The fact that Hilda seeks out the sages after this, and that Looker tells her N is alive and well and was seen somewhere faraway as if it’s some sort of consolation to her, I think, also supports this. The sages say similar things when captured, implying in their statements that Hilda was special to N and changed him, etc.
Hilda, all in all, is the one person who was able to change his life and touched him more deeply with her connection to pokemon, and I think, her eventual connection to him. She saves him from being Ghetsis’ puppet king and allows him to see there is good out there. This all happens above the other characters’ heads—Hilda’s friends wonder who the heck N is, and Ghetsis thinks he can just use the player as a pawn, until the end when he’s shocked and angered that N encouraged/allowed them to get the dragon when their plans were almost complete. The two know they are special to one another in a rather subtle way that I was surprised to find in a pokemon game. It’s probably the best interaction/relationship/etc. that they’ve ever written in these games (and N probably the most developed character.)
[/end essay] xD
