for some reason the masses accrued for my dyle personality yapping that I shat out on a whim I don't even think my thoughts were fully formed and the sketches CERTAINLY weren't where did you all come from /silly
worst thing you can do is enable my yapping bullshit so today it's time for an essay abt how I see the toon personalities as a whole and how I think it implicates A/D in how they were made — but not in that they were villains per-se, just fools playing god, no better than parents who should never have had children :'))) and also how it creates imperfect relationships between the toons as they seek to fill holes in themselves that were left there by intentional design
I'll use Dyle as my main example both because I think about him the most and because, even though he was never intended to be on the show, I don't think his process of creation was different in any meaningfully distinctive way.
Each toon is just intended to be a caricature, which I think is a pretty commonly accepted concept so I wouldn't say that's groundbreaking. But that means they were formed from a series of simplistic points; in Dyle's case, we know they wanted a train operator. What does a train operator need to be? Specifically, one that needs to be able to be left almost entirely alone to run the Gardenview transport system with no official professional training?
1) He needs to be self-driven and care about the system's infrastructure. How do you do that? Well, write him to love trains. If he adores trains, his ideal job would be to operate them. Right? He'll be driven to make sure the system runs because that will make him happy. If you tie his passions and his emotional state to his intended task, he will be personally driven to perform it.
2) Passion is just half the battle. He needs to be mentally able to take care of the trains and run them appropriately so that, to the visitors of Gardenview, the trains seem to be operated seamlessly. So, write him to be curious, intelligent, and a stickler for detail and timeliness. Combined with his love for trains, he'll want to know everything about how to take care of them as well as actually be smart enough to internalize not just how to drive them and direct them (his complex levers and switchboards), but also how to fix them (the toolboxes) and how to time them (caring about punctuality). He had to be made intelligent enough to naturally operate complex human systems (ie: not "toon logic") without supervision.
3) The trains need to be operated as if by magic. He needs to be unseen, which means he needs to be independent and be okay with being alone because he's not meant to have friends and he needs to operate without supervision. What's a cheap way to achieve that? Well, say he doesn't like being touched, and make him a bit standoffish— surely that adds up to make somebody who doesn't really want to hang out with the others much, right? It makes somebody who prefers to occupy his own time, or pick himself up when he falls, doesn't it? And not only that, but he was never intended to be part of the cast, so forming social bonds would just be a distraction from his duties at best and an active hindrance at worst if he dared abandon his post for something as trivial as conversation.
But writing something on paper doesn't make it true. For every single toon, the monkey's paw curls, because a caricature in fiction is not the same as a caricature in reality. And so every personality trait expands outside its original bounds like the roots of a flower seeking dirt, pushing out of the pot it was designed for and greedily, inconveniently, demanding to be more. Pushing to round out each singular trait into a true, living, breathing personality. Their minds are tied to their traits, but they're pushing the outer bounds of what embodying those traits truly means, finding mental nooks and crannies that A/D did not intend for them to occupy.
1) Dyle was written to love trains, love transport. So he does! He came out not unlike Finn, not unlike Shelly — he wants to talk about them endlessly. So he gets along with Finn! But, imperfectly. Their relationship reads to me like two hyperfixated people that finally have found someone who tolerates them talking about their fixation; they don't necessarily fully listen to each other, but not out of any kind of malice, it's more like puzzle pieces that don't quite fit. It's like an intellectual release, a vent of passion where someone won't tell you to shut up for once or just zone out and ignore you. And this isn't the fault of the other toons either: the others simply weren't made to process information like that, hence Dandy never being able to remember what a coupling rod is (and, well, other issues with how Dandy's personality was crafted, but that's a different conversation).
2) Dyle was written to be curious and intelligent. So he is. He states he likes to do his own recordkeeping and investigations and you can see behind him in his shop that he makes his own little red string conspiracy boards just like Rodger does, as though his curiosity can't be sated by just train maintenance knowledge alone. This particular facet of him was perhaps predicted (or directly observed) to run the risk of causing problems for A/D or for Gardenview as a whole so he was explicitly banned from speaking with Rodger, presumably so they couldn't commiserate on their findings. They aren't allowed to have contact because their personalities are complementary — they would amplify one another, as they satisfy each other's apparently-endless need for intellectual stimulation. They both make their investigation boards strung with crimson threads, but they both do it alone. Well, if Dyle actually listens to that ban of course, which is up for debate. But not only that, he learns more and more based specifically on the fact he learns everything he can about his fixations — the other toons are just his second fixation. The one he wasn't written to have. So because he loves them so much, he learns what they do. He bakes, he paints, he reads, he investigates, and no doubt there is more. A distraction from his work. A hindrance. Unintended.
3) Dyle was written to be alone. So he is. He considers none of the other toons his friends, says he doesn't have that luxury. But that doesn't mean he wants to be. He won't sit down with Brusha because he claims he doesn't have that many hours to burn, he's wedded to his work by design and needs to get back to it; he is lonely, but begrudgingly so. Because putting peripheral roadblocks between him and friendship (married to his work, averse to touch, independent, standoffish and dismissive) does not equate to actually purging him of the desire to be close with others. It would've been easier if he didn't want any friends, these wouldn't have been handicaps and they'd actually have aided him — but the fact of the matter is, that was not an aspect of his personality that A/D were able to set in stone. So, inadvertently, it became torturous. His isolation instead just removed him from the weeds of the interpersonal drama of the others, allowed him to be in a third party position where he's endeared by them all and all their flaws. A distant affection, the one child watching the others play outside while he's in some kind of eternal detention, the entire cast's secret admirer who envies them just a little bit too. He asked when he could join those he loved so much. Never, he was told. So alone in the basement he stayed. With all their posters on his walls, equal in weight, even Shelly's. He's read all her letters after all, all five bins. He's probably the only one who ever has. A waste of his time, a distraction from his work, a hindrance — unintended.
He was inadvertently designed to love from afar and this, too, explains why he feels so strongly about Shrimpo. Shrimpo was written to be hateful, ungrateful, cruel, yet he still had a space on the show — something I don't believe Dyle understands the reasoning for. Shrimpo despises everything that Dyle loves and treats it all with contempt. He has everything that Dyle wants: a place on the show, the ability to interact freely with the other characters, a room of his own, and Shrimpo hates it all. He hates it because he was born to hate and be hated. He can't help it, but that means Dyle can't help genuinely hating him either where most other toons just kind of tend to see Shrimpo as a nuisance. Because for Dyle it cuts much deeper. That's why he slips up and says he doesn't understand why "we" keep him around: he wants to be part of the group so badly, yet Shrimpo squanders that opportunity. I love them, but he hates them. I want to be here, but he doesn't. Why is he here while I can't be? Why does he deserve it and I don't, why is he allowed to hurt them while I'm not allowed to help them? I just don't understand.
I want to send him far away.
Dyle is a product not just of his in-world writing, but how that narrative sought to escape the box it was born in — and that's a reality shared by every single character at Gardenview whether any of them realize that about themselves or each other or not. The first part intended, the second inconvenient. Because much like parents attempting to mold their children into preconceived motions of who they believed those children would or should be, Arthur and Delilah simply didn't appear to want to accept that the toons might naturally have personalities outside what was written for them, that they were whole now, and those extant traits were treated as loose ends to be tied off and pruned for an ideal character. I don't believe they ever fully saw their characters as real, as independent living beings —so while they never intended to harm the toons, that doesn't mean they didn't cause irreparable and devastating damage by contorting their minds and emotions.
It's fascinating. And deeply, deeply sad. There is no villain in this story, only a vast tragedy from which none escaped unscathed. A sea of puzzle pieces that just don't quite fit.
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