I just want to make an appreciation post about @frillsand’s Actor Wally AU.
The original story, created by Clown, revolves around a fictional 1970s children’s TV show that never existed. It’s presented as an online archival mystery, where the colorful world draws you in while fragments of something darker are sprinkled throughout. Clowns project is haunted by absence. We don’t fully know who Wally or the cast are because the story is currently incomplete. It’s a world driven story with characters used sparsely.
The Actor Wally AU is, in many ways, the opposite. Instead of a bright surface with darkness hidden beneath it begins with darkness and characters while asking you to find the light in a bleak situation. Wally is a fully realized character with complicated, flawed, and deeply human tendencies (despite being a puppet).
In the AU, puppets and humans coexist, but puppets are unambiguously discriminated against. Wally’s friends are his safe space, and his fierce love for them becomes both his strength and his flaw. His desire to protect them crosses into control when Howdy leaves to become a soldier but Wally’s fear and codependence pressure him into giving up that future. It shows how trauma can transform care into domination without overtly telling the audience how to feel. You could argue that Wally’s actions are sweet, harmless, or straight up controlling, and honestly, you’d have a solid stance no matter which angle you take.
As they move to the city, the discrimination intensifies. Wally comes to fully grasp the brutality of the world they’re in. He chooses to shoulder the ugliness himself, becoming a martyr who sacrifices his own emotional wellbeing to preserve his friends childlike innocence. But in doing so, he also denies them the agency to grow and face the world on their own terms.
His methods become darker and more desperate. He blackmails a human producer into funding his dream of creating a children’s TV show where his friends can thrive in a controlled environment. When discrimination persists despite their success, Wally turns into the archetype of the “intolerable diva.” A label historically attached to marginalized performers who, in reality, were simply refusing to accept second class treatment in American entertainment. He becomes both shield and sword for his friends by bullying human staff, fighting aggressively for respect, and ensuring no one can harm his community.
It's unambiguously a hypervigilant trauma response from discrimination, previous exploitation, and (possibly) SA. When your identity is marginalized, survival often means becoming the “difficult” one. Any resistance to oppression is often cast in a negative light but sometimes it’s the only light one has. Wally’s inability to “turn it off” when genuinely kind humans enter their orbit speaks to how deeply this defensive identity has fused with his sense of self.
Meanwhile, his friends (the very people he’s trying to protect) begin to feel the weight of his control. They love him, they understand the horrors he’s endured, but they’re not blind. They see how his aggression has reshaped him, how their relationship now comes with unspoken rules and eggshells. Some have lost opportunities because of his need to keep them close, safe, and contained. This is an emotionally honest portrayal of how trauma doesn’t just scar individuals but reverberates through entire communities and relationships.
The Actor Wally AU paints a complex picture of a marginalized figure navigating an industry that was never built for him to succeed and what that does to you. Wally’s character embodies the double edged nature of personal survival and the cost of self-imposed martyrdom. He’s not a villain, just a person whose love and fear have grown tangled.
I relate deeply to this version of Wally. The way trauma can make you sharpen your edges because being soft was never safe. I understand his friends too. Watching someone you love change, realizing you have to shrink yourself to stay close, or losing a chance at something bigger because love and loyalty pulled you back. No one here is evil. Just complicated.
Anyway, incredible work, truly.
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
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ellievsbear
