ill take the potential bullet of being someone whos disliked for liking this ship nowadays (like obviously i have a brain. i only like it within the canon of qsmp, not irl considering the circumstances.) but philever really was something special :( the storyline of a shipwrecked man with lost memories, falling in love with the man on top of the wall that reminded him of someone he loves. someone with visual similarity, but was an entirely different person underneath the green and white hat. he liked to play along with forever's advances, but was never truly serious about them, everyone else always took it particularly non-serious too, the only person who felt so strongly about it was forever himself.
to see that relationship evolve... maybe in the beginning it was nothing more than someone who was borderline-obsessed with philza, to when he started showing his other personality traits that wrung a personal chord with phil. his pure dedication to taking care of the eggs by spending days building the N.I.N.H.O., fighting with his everything when (ta)lullah got downed, and showing he has that same passion he did towards his romance, also towards other things he cared about as well. like a burning hot sun. i always saw people give 4halo the title of "the sun and the moon" ship, but i really would give that to philever for all of the death and night motifs that exist in philza's (and missa, (ta)lullah, and chayanne's) aesthetics. as well as phil's interesting personality that exists in a "rp" setting. hes playful, but he is quick to turn serious and rarely has his guard fully down.
when forever became president a shift occurred, especially because forever's priorities changed after the constant rejections, while he did still teasingly flirt with philza, compared to beforehand with mentioning of caging him, now reducing that to mere mentions of being a first lady. phil obviously rejected, still didn't change the fact he found forever competent enough to vote him into office, even despite him being so loudly against any kind of government or presidency in quesadilla island (back to his roots!). with different big egg-related events that kept happening, and the small advances. i feel like phil really started caring about forever deeply.
admittedly my memory is fuzzy for all this, but i'd say the ship hit a "peak" during the timeframe of the happy pills, the birdhouse and the nether exploration, and subsequent purgatory. it was hard to read because of all the chaos, but it felt like two hands that were just barely holding on to eachother, only for the storm to sweep them apart again. there was a fondness for eachother and every reunion felt so interpersonal, the hug between forever and phil at purgatory, the emotions exchanged during his coma, the gun being drawn on philza, even through the drugs phil was the only person forever trusted with knowing where richas location was (even if it was fake.). phil ended up being the one trusted to seek out forever when things started going horrifically ary, and while not much was explained, it seemed that phil ended up being the one in the end that kept actively checking on forever as his sunny attitude slowly fizzled out and ultimately got swallowed whole by @ v @ . even when he heard that forever had shot his daughter, he immediately just knew... he wouldn't do this, there's something wrong. he was first to clock it in and figure it out over a mere confession from (ta)llulah in the nest.
while my memory is fuzzy with the canon nowadays, and admittedly a LOT of things were up in the air, i'd really say forever fell first, but phil fell harder in the end. but death ended up taking him, just as with everyone else. hence back to square one.
its disappointing so many things never got wrapped up, so many conversations never were had. maybe its better a story like this is so open-ended, taking the "canon" ending of him getting assassinate within prison. but the potential outcomes of a potential future where he recovered and went to regain his sunshine back after his horrible presidency with the island would've made for something real special. i wish this duo i cared about lasted longer.
even despite real life circumstances, which makes it completely understandable why all this had to happen (and i am not advocating for any kind of "comeback" on forever's part). storywise, its quite tragic. which is awfully fitting for the both of them. even if we all wished for something better.
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jacobvanloon
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