#dewmie meta

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Fun theory with no evidence from Buddy’s Book:

Red car is Dewey’s (non-Mayormobile) car. Blue car is Jamie’s car.

They’re both in this episode in some way, too - you see young!Dewey on the ‘READ’ sign and then Jamie plays Buddy.

idk why they parked at the library. I see these weird parallels between Dewey/Jamie, Ruby/Sapphire and Steven/Connie all the time blah blah

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Two bombshell pieces of evidence that the ship will be canon??

EXHIBIT 1

DEWEY’S PANTS ARE TOO SHORT JAMIE’S PANTS ARE TOO LONG. highwaters and turn-ups, people! 

EXHIBIT B

DEWEY HAS TOO LITTLE HAIR JAMIE HAS LOADS OF IT.

if they fuse, regular amounts of pants AND hair.

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Finally found a good quality file so i’m here to remind you that Dewey has been staring at Jamie in the opening since s2 or so.

I’m going to break into your house and fill your sock drawer with pine-scented stinky tree air fresheners in case it wasn’t obvious enough that Ex-Mayor Billiam Dewey has been silently, painfully pining after Jamie the Mailman this whole time.

There is also a poster behind Dewey that looks slightly like a butt.

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Alternate take on the love quadrangle prediction -

Smiley/Jamie isn’t a red herring ship before Dewey/Jamie at all, but a Dewey/Jamie fake dating thing to get Barb to stop pursuing Dewey might happen instead, then it’ll get weird.

...”you don’t have to be a plunger - just pretend to have one”?

I can’t tell if this happening in the show before as a trope (Kiki and Ronaldo in Restaurant Wars) means it’s more likely it’ll happen or not at this point - there are so many weird parallels all the time.

In re-watching Restaurant Wars, there’s loads of clouds in almost all of the establishing shots - which would be for Barb in character symbols, but idk if it’s a strong enough reference... hmmmm

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So, you hear lot about the Cool Kids as analogs of the Crystal Gems. I have many theories now about Dewey and Jamie being analogs for Ruby and Sapphire (and becoming a ship as a result) since Reunited aired, snapping and crackling in my brain like the small twigs of an eastern European pine forest. Here are six points I've been thinking about for an unhealthy amount of time:

Point 1: Color palettes

Bill's color palette is kind of hard to ignore - it's about as close as you could get to making one of the human characters bright ruby red - pretty much a coral color. Jamie’s default mailman outfit is blue, kind of like Sapphire - simple enough.

You'd think Bill’s suit is just grey, but that's a weird color theory thing going on - it's actually shades of purple! Ruby has a little dark purple in her outfit - Garnet has even more. Also, Bill and Jamie also have one bit of blue and red each - Jamie with his chucks and Bill with his tie.

Their appearance in the rupphire wedding is a rubber mallet to the skull as color palettes are concerned:

Bill has ditched the tie, so he has a bit of blue around his shirt collar. Jamie’s belt is dark red. That’s two instances now of hinting at each other’s colors somewhere in their outfits!

This is also the only time I think we see Jamie in a blue shirt that isn’t his work uniform - why blue? Dude wears blue all the time at his day job and his one dressy shirt happens to be blue, too? This feels SO INTENTIONAL.

Point 2: Watery stuff and firey stuff

Jamie ends up in or around water a lot!

In Love Letters alone there’s a ton of stuff - being a total moon calf out in the rain; throwing the mail he was supposed to deliver into the ocean. Then there’s Garnet’s line that first gets Jamie sweet on her in the first place: “I’m a really good swimmer.” Swimming! Water!

He throws a bucket of water on Steven in Historical Friction

He ends up *in the ocean* with the others in I Am My Mom.

You might make a parallel with him and Lapis here because it’s water instead of ice, but water in some form is a common theme with the gems of Blue Diamond's court, so to me it points to a Sapphire thing. Water here = ice. I’d even predict something happening in a future episode with Jamie being cold or dealing with ice - we’ll see!

There’s also the whole theme of Blue Diamond's gems being more emotionally-focused, too. An analogous human would wear his heart on his sleeve a bit - falling in love at the drop of a hat, being overly dramatic and so on.

Warmth or fire tends to be a running theme for Bill, some of the most obvious things:

Melting ice cream in Joking Victim *and* Political Power.

The fireworks show he arranged.

Steven’s bit in Political Power about how, "Mayor Dewey was hiding things from you ... because he loves you," and then you see a shot of a nice fire in the fireplace.

His skin color is basically a perpetual sunburn.

In Political Power, Bill has the line, “you can't control what happens in the world but you can control how people feel about it - that's the real weight I carry - making the good people of Beach City feel better...” Now, he isn’t very successful at keeping people calm ultimately, but he tries, and even references Ocean Town being destroyed because of people rioting/panicking! Water = emotions Fire = composure.

There's weird bits of crossover here, too: Bill gets sprayed in his first appearance, and Jamie accidentally sets his quill on fire while writing his letter to Garnet. They don't do well using each other's elements, do they!

There is only one big counterexample to this I can find, yet even THAT is telling. To be fair, Bill is very much The Boss in Historical Friction and even a bit of a jerk, but then you see this bit at the end?

Jamie gets a fire in his eyes when he gets the position as director of the community theater. Who really started that fire, though? Who gave Jamie all that power? Bill did.

Point 3: Bill has a type

Bill has a crush on Pearl! And hats off to Pewey shippers - ship what you want and live your best life! But I'm afraid I have to bring this ship up from the depths just to sink it, because for my purposes it's a red herring:

Out of the main three Crystal Gems, who does Jamie portray best? Pearl!

Bill is into slender types with big noses, basically. There’s some fun headcanoning to be done about WHY Bill is so ridiculously transparent with Pearl and this hasn't been the case around Jamie. Perhaps he's over-compensating for a crush on Jamie? Perhaps he never thought of Jamie like that before and that will lead to a bit of development for them both? Now that Bill isn't mayor anymore, maybe he feels he can be a little more open about himself. Who knows?

Point 4: SU Tap Together

This post on the SU Tap Together game. tl;dr - they give Dewey and Jamie VERY SIMILAR abilities to Ruby and Sapphire as starters. I doubt it's coincidental.

Point 5: Buck’s dad

Pretty much the whole fandom agrees that Buck is an analog for Garnet. In some way, Garnet is the product of Ruby and Sapphire. Would it not make sense that Buck would have two dads to parallel Garnet's two 'moms'?

I am calling it now - Buck is going to get a second dad - a dad that can ultimately help foster his interest in art in a healthy, supportive way that his other dad hasn't been able to do up to now; a dad who is a creator and artist in his own way - as an actor! Jamie's gonna become Buck's second dad!

Point 6: It's time!

This is more meta, but we have several canon/near-canon fem ships. Would this show really have SO many sapphic and het ships and then have little-to-no men together? It just feels like next logical step to ALL THE inclusiveness that makes this show what it is! Dewmie is endgame! Soylent Green is people!

That's pretty much it. I’m kicking myself because way back, with all the hints at Garnet being a fusion so early, we all might have missed one of the most obvious ones - that the analogs for the gems that made her up as a fusion were there from the beginning and no one noticed! 

So, that's it. Grab a brochure and a stale cookie on your way out. Thanks for reading!

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Er, wait --

So I’m thinking back on the meta I wrote for Buddy's Book (some... more) and I mention that perhaps something deeper than just 'figuring out what his own legacy would be' caused Buddy to leave. The weird spelling errors in that episode feel intentional, like William and Buddy were pissed off at each other and doing something kind of spiteful back and forth.

That maybe there was some sort of problem that developed between William and Buddy.

Could a "legacy" for William not only be the whole 'I founded the town gimmie that bronze statue' thing but also a family? Specifically a wife and child? William Dewey has descendants alive in the present day of the SU world, after all. Buddy comes back to Beach City to become an author, but he has no descendants in Beach City that we know of.

crap crap crap did William have a thing with Buddy and then left him to marry a woman and have a kid? D-did he break Buddy's heart?! What even is this? A headcanon? A prediction? I have no idea what to do with this information except be massively sad.

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If the time travel thing is right, the reason we see the Dewey/Jamie “sad men tango scene" in an episode called 'Reunited' makes a lot of sense. The episode was definitely about Garnet, but also about the Diamonds being back together; and Lapis coming back to join the gems - and Bismuth... it was about all these characters reuniting with each other.

Bill and Jamie’s thing at the wedding is a bit like they're being reunited too, even if they aren't aware. They’re going to be together as a couple in the past somehow - they’re together again in the present.

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Episodes I Watch Way Too Closely: 144 - Letters to Lars

Going from Jamie’s big episode in Love Letters, there’s a curious connection between that and the title of a big Dewey-focused episode, Letters to Lars, a few seasons later. A few SEASONS, I say as I collapse. More about this big episode and PLEASE OH PLEASE IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE READ ABOUT THE WRESTLING SCENE under my read more. And if tumblr is gross to you, read this on A03.

Lars is becoming quite the device for Bill’s character development of all things - the last episode was about Bill not even realizing Lars was missing and ultimately losing his job as mayor. Lars is even pink now - not quite Bill's shade but still - weird parallels between them! Toward the end of the episode, LARS HIMSELF makes a joke about being a storytelling device. Poor Lars! Lars outright asks why Steven sent him a *letter* – a symbol for Jamie. Even Lars is telling us this episode really isn't about him! Love Lars. Gotta get some more Lars in my life. Make a note of that.

Let me recap the episode briefly! Lars is still in space with the Off Colors doing his whole Star Trekky captain's log thing. Suddenly, a letter pops through Lars' head from Steven! Steven talks about the events going on in Beach City through his letter; we see Bill showing up as a common, depressing thread in most of Steven's anecdotes. We finally see a bit of resolution when Steven suggests that Bill start working at the Big Donut. We also see some atonement for Bill's mistake when he doesn't realize who Lars is in Dewey Wins  - naming a donut after Lars and then visiting Lars' parents.

Onto the episode rip-apart! Okay, I already mentioned the little Jamie reference with Lars having a letter pop out of his head. Then, we have an establishing shot of the ocean. Two Jamie symbols! Even before Bill shows up, Jamie is there in some way. Initially, I thought the events happened during the course of a day, but Jamie's improv class is at night – it's the only scene that we see in the episode at night, in fact! More toward that day/night or light/dark theory I have going.

More character symbols! The HAM Sign on the window of the Big Donut looks like a sun - and then Bill, similar in appearance to a walking ham, shows up a minute later.

A lot of this episode deals with how even when his self-absorption has gotten in the way, Bill genuinely wants to help people, be part of things, and ultimately make people happy. Not having that anymore has left him rudderless. Bill has never really been an uplifting kind of guy out of all the characters in the show – he's a mess, really – but this episode was easily one of his saddest. We see him becoming more and more desperate to participate throughout the episode – and becoming more and more unhinged as each attempt fails.

Uh, what is going on with sad men at their wit’s end in this show and half-untucked shirt tails? That’s twice I’ve seen it now – one for Bill and one for Jamie back when he was being a weirdo in Love Letters...

What a couple of dorks.

Interestingly, Bill and Pearl have no interaction this episode – not one line is exchanged between them in the pizza shop scene. If anything, Garnet interacts with Bill more… or at least reacts to him – with a sympathetic little ‘aw’ (I so hope Garnet helps get Bill and Jamie together please oh please) and then whacking him in the head with a tennis ball. Head injuries are always good for character development - well done, Garnet.

Bill could have had another chance to talk to Pearl during the improv scene too, but nothing happens. What is Bill doing trying to participate in the improv class in the first place, anyway? You can tell he's obviously jumped into it last minute out of desperation - no Laugh Guard sweater or anything. You’d think he’d be trying some last-ditch effort to get with Pearl, his big!crush, but no. We see one more token effort to talk to Pearl in one of the background scenes in Reunited and that's it.

Mr. Smiley and Barb are taking an improv class so... that's interesting. Jamie had been doing lots of one-man shows at this point, and he has had trouble getting other people to show up to audition for stuff in the past, so I'm hoping he didn't have to beg people to take this class. It's also the first class we hear of him teaching (but not the first session of the class) so I'm wondering if the community theater might need to start making money. I promised my friends and family I would not write a volume of speculation on the Beach City Arts and Culture operational budget, so I'm going to move on.

To touch on the lack of Bill/Pearl interaction this episode one more time - Pearl actually interacts more with Jamie as a heckler, even prompting a 'Pearl, be nice!’ from Steven. I don’t think she was doing anything maliciously, but the fact that she initially made Jamie look incompetent stuck in my mind a bit. Between Pearl and Peridot? He gets ripped apart in this scene, and ends up pretty annoyed by the time Bill enters. The whole thing is just cringey and wonderful.

Jamie also seems kind of… weirdly full of himself here! He tries to teach improv but honestly he's not doing all that well. I’m wondering if this is going to be a running theme. I so want the next Jamie episode to be a 'crisis of confidence' thing – either a bout of impostor syndrome or people questioning his competence in some way or UGH. There is kind of a disparity so far between Bill's and Jamie's development as characters, so I hope he gets an episode soon.

That last bit with Peedee and his price-gouging tater tots is when everything is thrown out into the open about much being mayor meant to Bill. Notice none of it is actually feeling like he accomplished anything as a leader – it was the routine of it all, really:

 “You know what I miss the most about being the mayor? The little things – getting dressed and ready for work, walking down the boardwalk seeing everyone’s smiling faces – yes! Knowing I had a place in this town. I used to look forward to it every day – just like the people of this town used to look forward to their morning donut.”

And today in More Lines With Subtext That Probably Isn’t There:

“I guess these days no one gets what they want.”

And then yay! Found some meaning NEW DONUT BOY!

Bill and Barb’s flirting is admittedly super cute to me. If I’m wrong about LITERALLY EVERYTHING I have been theorizing and predicting and hyperfixating on these past few months; if they just decide to make the dance in Reunited a joke like most of the fandom thinks it is; if they just make Bill straight and keep Jamie alone forever? I hope they end up doing something with Bill and Barb. Perhaps Bill would be able to get her to relax her parenting style a bit more - and in turn, Barb could make Bill more attentive as a parent! It also makes you wonder where Sadie would fit in to all that because she does not seem to like Bill at all. BUT ENOUGH, steering readily back into bisexual-disasters-bill-and-jamie territory…

I think this bit actually speaks to two things - one thing about how Bill has now changed as a character and something that started as a tiny prediction but is now a HUGE one:

Okay first, it shows us that Bill is available now! I ramble a bit in my post about Dewey Wins where Bill thought it would be inappropriate to do a ton of flirting as mayor - maybe Bill feels he can play the field a bit now? Even in his interactions with Pearl, he never actually went so far as to ask her out on a date or make a 'move’ so to speak. Okay, so he referred to her as 'the hot one', but he never said that to her face. He whenever he tried talking to her, he tended to cycle between ridiculousness and disappointment, really. So yeah, Bill can be 'in the game' again.

Now for the prediction I have, based on the speech scene at the end of Dewey Wins and the scene in the donut shop towards the end of this episode:

Jamie’s standing off by himself, staring at the soda machine in thought. Smiley is the first to get donuts and then walks off screen in Jamie's direction. Then, Barb and Bill flirt.

Jamie and Smiley are also standing together during the debate in Dewey Wins - there are a couple weird things where Smiley disappears from the background during this - I can't tell if it's just an inconsistency in the animation, or they did it to make the figures in the foreground more easily visible. When Smiley *is* there, it looks like him and Jamie might even be talking to each other a bit during the speeches. I swear the angle of Jamie's arm in one part makes it look like Jamie has grabbed Smiley's hand for support as Bill's speech starts. Hey, this is me talking, though - I grew up on '90s science fiction where it was all 256-color screen captures and I read way too much romantic subtext into shots framed to deal with tiny aspect ratios on old TVs – ANYWAY!

I'm predicting that there might be one, final red herring!romance for Bill and Jamie each. For Bill, it’s going to be Barb - for Jamie, it’s going to be Mr. Smiley. Mr. Smiley has been in enough background scenes lately with Jamie for me to wonder if Jamie might start dating Mr. Smiley first - and Bill is going to learn of it and date Barb as a reaction.

My biggest piece of evidence for this is that seemingly RANDOM BREAK into wrestling stuff in the middle of the episode! Some of these may overlap with other ships or plot points in the show of course, but I'm for now I'm reading this as foreshadowing in my Bill/Barb/Jamie/Smiley love quadrangle theory:

"The Marmalade Boys fought each other in – you guessed it – marmalade!"

This will either be a messy relationship (Jamie and Smiley?) or... fighting in mar... hmm.. mal... mail? MAIL? DUELING POSTAL WORKERS? Are Barb and Jamie going to fight over Bill?

"Concrete Heat faced off against the Wolf of Wall Street inside a steel cage!"

Steven says this in voice over, but this isn't a “face-off” really - we see Concrete Heat (Heat? Firey warmth stuff? Bill is that you?) climbing up the steel cage to get away from a dude in a wolf suit. This might be Bill and Mr. Smiley fighting over Jamie, but I think it's more likely that Barb will either pursue Bill, or Bill will feel trapped by her.

"And the Good Looking Gang finally lost the tag-team title to The Sea Wasp and Shark-o-Mania!"

That has only one interpretation to me. Two guys with their arms around each other, one in blue and the other in red. Is my ship just sailing in foreshadowy form or what?! Does objective reality really exist? Oh, also - one of Jamie's character symbols is mentioned here – the sea!

You might be thinking, “What about Bill and Jamie's dance in Reunited! Jamie could have been dancing with Smiley if are a thing” - but I don't think they're a thing yet – and that scene was to plant a more obvious seed with the viewer that there's some sort of thing between Bill and Jamie - something buried deep they will only let out between the Red Solo Cups of Dubious Contents and being mutually upset about things. Their running away from the wedding screams (and I’m so happy I don’t have to keep this to a G rating because it’s tumblr and not A03) them having a one-night stand! Or at least intending to before the attack happened. I'm guessing giant aliens landing on the beach would kill the mood... unless you're Greg. I have no idea if Bill and Jamie's evening together will be referenced later on as something that causes tension or awkwardness between them. I could see Bill maybe even ghosting Jamie for a bit as a result. Maybe this awkwardness is what pushes them into the other relationships?

At the moment in the storyline, I suspect Mr. Smiley just fills the gay friend trope for Jamie – helps Jamie through a rough time after all the trauma of the Aquamarine episodes. In this case, Bill might misinterpret their friendship as something else and I'm just losing a hemisphere of my brain at that.

So to summarize: there's gonna be a big thing with Bill, Jamie, Barb and Mr. Smiley, and Bill/Jamie will ultimately be the result. I'd say I'm taking bets but that's illegal, so I'm just going to look really smug if it's true.

To wrap up, most of Bill's story arc feels like it’s tilting toward stuff to get him out of being so self-absorbed. Which is going to be a process! The bit at the end where Steven has him name a donut after Lars and then bring some over to his parents is a good start. I hope the whole abduction thing is brought up specifically with Jamie and Bill together as part of that growth, but I feel that's kind of optimistic. I get the feeling something new is going to happen that might make Bill a bit more selfless.

SO! Sweet jelly baby jesus this is so much fun! This gets me caught up of all the episodes that have currently aired. I'm going to start watching the series from the beginning now and writing a post on episodes where Bill/Jamie might be hinted at, where they have minor roles where something might speak to their character development, OR just random theories. Either way, there will probably be at least one more chapter to this meta in the coming days or weeks, so expect another update soon!