#cwilbur analysis

[bumblebeerror]

Sometimes cwilbur infects my stupid little brain and I can’t help but like. Wail about it because like

First off, how dare popular fandom infantalize him the way it does, acting as if his mental health was Phil’s fault or that his actions related to his death weren’t his doing

Like I need to scream because like. Mental illness doesn’t remove your brain’s ability to chose to take an action.

Wilbur turned to the camera and told us he was the villain because he had become one and that’s the POINT of his arc and if you’d watched a SINGLE Tommy mod video or Wilbur Minecraft expieriment video you’d recognize that he loves using this particular basic plot

Wilbur loves telling a story that goes like this:

Wilbur obtains Power

Wilbur attempts to do Good with the Power

The power corrupts him

He makes a bid for more power

Wilbur hurts his friends

Wilbur gets himself killed/kills himself

He loves this arc. He does it all the time in Tommy’s mods. He followed it in dsmp almost to the letter!

He brought up the election, despite being the uncontested leader of L’Manberg. It bit him in the ass.

People love to pin the button being pressed on loads of other characters but the more interesting thing, the thing that drives me fucking insane, is that Wilbur told people he wanted to do this on two previous occasions. He never relinquished this desire to press that button.

What changed? He got serious.

He decided to stop reaching out to Tommy or Quackity. And he succeeded.

Not because he wanted to defeat Schlatt, but because even though he already won it back, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t perfect. He destroyed it because it wasn’t what he wanted anymore, because it wasn’t his anymore. He’d become a facsimile to CDream at the time - angry about the settlement because it existed without him. Destroying something because he didn’t like it, without caring about whether others were attached to it.

And That Shit is what interests me about his character. Obviously he doesn’t follow the same path cDream does - and I like the idea of their stories rhyming in a way, two divergent paths of the same destructive tendencies. Wilbur is what cDream could have been, had he not been so corrupted by power. Wilbur is that power corruption undone by his own undoing.

[lilyminer]

“Yeah I guess I relate to c!Wilbur” (<- you should be very concerned)

Yeah something something he’s perceived as a put-together and reliable person on the outside but under the surface he’s cracking under the pressure. He has many people who love and support him but over time that love feels more like another expection to adhere to so he remains deserving of it.

[comfycalamity]

what the pogtopia traitor arc actually meant

[all names and events mentioned are in regards to the fictional characters and events on the DSMP. warning for talk of paranoia, specifically in regard to cWilbur]

i know its been well over a year, and the "arc" was only ten days, but i think this incident in Pogtopia has gone largely, well, discarded for what i think its intent was

for a brief refresh, im referring to a period of time, starting 10 days prior to the Pogtopia vs Manberg war, where it was revealed by Dream that there was a traitor amongst Pogtopia. there was big contention leading up to the reveal on who would end up being the traitor

and yeah, of course audiences loved playing the game of "who's going to be the traitor??" and theorizing and making fan content, but i think it served a deeper narrative purpose than that.

i think this event was meant to forcibly put the audience in Wilbur's perspective

its hard to ignore that this took place at a time deep in Wilburs paranoia. he didnt trust Tubbo, he didnt trust Techno, he didnt trust practically anyone. noteably, because he feared their betrayal. feared that they were secretly working against him. that anyone claiming to be on his side was actually lying to him.

and it's difficult to make an audience "get" these thought processes and understand the characters perspective, especially when told in a third-person perspective. it largely relies on individual experience, making it uncertain how it will land. thats where the traitor arc comes in.

the traitor arc functions to forcibly put the audience in his shoes. to have those same fears and doubts of whos secretly working against them. the perspective is no longer coming from the monologues of a known spiraling character, it is outlined as a certain threat the audience has to keep in mind.

even if audiences didn't "get" Wilburs thought process prior, the pogtopia traitor arc forces them to feel it, and that is its purpose

[cookie-bear]

cTubbo: “Goodbye mister president.”

cWilbur: “Goodbye, mister president.”

These two lines completely broke me. It’s the fact that cTubbo said it first as if it was a reflex, as if it was something familiar, and then Wilbur turned around and said it right back to him as an equal.

The term president holds so much more weight to both of them then just a title, and I don’t think cWilbur realized that when he calls himself president, cTubbo means it in the same way. Because it’s not just a title, it’s a promise. It’s a chain, it’s all the agonizing long nights never sleeping never knowing if things are going to be okay, it’s all the grief and the pain and the frustration and the hopelessness and knowing you have to make the hard decisions that people will forever hate you for. The first time cWilbur called cTubbo president he said it as a punishment. Now cWilbur calls him it not as an insult or a death sentence, but as his equal. Though he had still cared for him in some way, up until now he had always considered cTubbo as someone beneath him. Someone without a backbone, a pawn to use to get what he wanted, a child. Now he truly sees himself in cTubbo in this moment, the good and the bad. He sees that cTubbo has grown beyond cWilbur’s outdated opinions of him, sees the pain hidden behind his eyes and any trace of that child that he knew long gone from his face. He sees a president.