TBOB PART 2: OF FLATLAND, EXWHYLIA AND EUCLYDIA (3/4)
Hello, everyone, welcome once again to another post about Bill’s dimension. One day this analysis will end, I promise. But today is not that day: today is the day we will talk about Bill’s family.
And oh boy if there’s a lot to talk about.
Please check all previous posts to understand this one (and the masterlist too!).
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PART 4: OF BILL’S FAMILY
“If you think Stan’s relationship with his family is bad, Bill’s is worse” - Alex Hirsch, NYCC 2015
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Loved and ostracized
Everyone loved me immediately and the mayor dubbed me the “best baby of all time”, made my birthday a holiday and gave out free knives. (...) Truth is I’ve always been loved and admired by all!
Of course Bill starts telling his story with a huge. Fucking. Lie.
How can I be so sure? First of all, the hyperbolic way in which he talks about his birth as if it’s the second coming of Christ. Then, all the previous points of this endless analysis.
Considering everything we have until now, I find it very difficult that Bill’s birth was celebrated by everyone. Surely his family celebrated it - if his society is similar to Flatland’s, having a regular son would’ve been enough to make them very happy.
But also… he’s just an Equilateral. And if his world has social classes based on the number of sides, then he’s from a middle class. I doubt the birth of another Equilateral was a reason big enough for huge celebrations.
Also, let’s not forget what Bill himself said in the TBOB: you should make a new reality and a meaning for yourself. Well, what if this is the reality he made? A place where he was immediately loved and admired by everyone?
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Scalene and Euclid
Sooo… those are the names of Bill’s parents.
Honestly? They’re interesting. Even if I’m a bit weirded out by Scalene: in the only image we have of Bill’s parents (the grayed-out triangles on thisisnotawebsitedotcom) neither of them looks like a scalene triangle. On the contrary, they both look equilateral.
It’s a bit strange, you know? As if a person has “Neanderthal” as their first name. “Neanderthal Smith” or similar. Sounds strange, doesn’t it?
While speaking of Euclid, I think it’s a nice name. It’s the same name as the dimension they lived in and no, it’s not as weird as it seems: in our world, some people have the same name as the country they’re from, so it’s not so weird.
But hey, the most important thing is that we canonically have the names of Bill’s parents! We know he had parents and we know details of his relationship with them!
And this raises A LOT of questions.
Let’s start with his mother: we know she loved him, at least a little bit. She sang him lullabies and told him she loved him, despite his strange eye. So we can be sure at least one of his parents didn’t mind his deformity so much.
Also, this part in TBOB after Bill and Ford's breakdown, in which a very, very drunk Bill talks to his mom:
“I’m gonna be back from school soon, don’t forget to cut out the crust off my sandwiches or I’ll —”
I don’t know you, but to me, this sounds like the threat of a spoiled child. Something like “cut the crust off or I’ll throw a tantrum”. And yes, this implies Bill was a spoiled child - or at least, a child who considered himself above others, mother included. So yes, I can imagine him throwing a tantrum at his mother for something stupid like some crust on his sandwiches.
But again, even more questions! How was his mother towards him? Was she submissive? Was she combative? Was she ready to answer to every little whim of her son like a Flatlander Woman or did she ask for some respect? Considering how bratty Bill is, I'm more prone to believe she was very lenient towards him.
While speaking of his father, I find it very fascinating that we know absolutely nothing about Bill’s relationship with his father. We know his mother loved him (maybe to the point of spoiling him too much)… but his father? Did he care about Bill? I suppose so, considering Bill visited a doctor (unless it was his mother’s decision only, but I doubt it).
And about his job: was he a Tradesman? Bill attended school, but was school supposed to teach him about his future job too? If not, then this was up to his parents, right? Presumably, it was his father’s job to teach Bill how to be a Tradesman, a bit like in the Flatland society. If that’s the case, then why we don’t have any information about this? Why no memory at all? Bill seems to care about his father too - if we assume that the top hat he has was his father’s. So at least he cared enough to keep something of him.
Was his father a bad guy? Was he cruel? Or was he so blinded by society’s rules to torture his son and think he was doing it for his good? In that case, I would understand why he did everything he did - but beware: understanding doesn’t mean accepting. It would be a bit like Filbrick Pines’ situation: I can get the reasoning behind his actions, but that doesn’t make him Father of the Year. Maybe it’s the same for Bill’s father. This wouldn’t be the first parallel between Stanley and Bill, after all.
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An Irregular masquerading as Regular
Time to talk about Bill’s eye.
We can safely assume Bill’s rare mutation was having his eye on the face and not on the side - which, from the Euclideans’ perspective, meant having an eye on his insides.
Now, imagine with me: you have a child and you see that your baby has no eyes. No eyes at all, not even an eye socket. I bet you would freak out, at least a little bit. You would probably send your baby to a doctor and ask if there is something they can do.
The doctor checks the baby and gives you both good and bad news: your child has eyes and they work. But they are inside his body. In his goddamn stomach.
And if all of this isn’t enough, your child starts telling you that sure, he can see a lot of things! He sees things you cannot see - no one else can see.
Now, would you say: “Oh, no problem. He can see things no one can, so he’s fine and his eyes work well”? Or would you probably freak out even more and fear your son is having goddamn visions because he’s probably dying or has a tumor or who knows what?
I can understand why Bill’s parents brought him to a doctor. And I can understand why the doctor thought the best solution was to “blind” that eye. As far as Euclideans know, there are no “stars” and there is no “above”. It’s as if someone in our world says they can see rotating hypercubes in real life. Would you think they’re perfectly fine or question if they’re insane/growing mad/getting very sick?
So yes, even if it's insane for us, from Bill’s parents' POV, giving him medicine to make him blind was for his own good. Does that make them Parents of the Year? Hell no, they were literally blinding their own son, of course it’s terrible and insane and if someone tries to do the same they should be immediately thrown in jail. But for the rules of Euclydia’s world, this was probably the best thing to do.
And personally, I ADORE the tragedy of this. The tragedy of giving something to your son that will permanently blind him, but trying to make it at least bearable - he’s still a child, he doesn’t really understand what he’s drinking, but you think it’s for his own good, your whole world think it's for his own good, so you use something silly that he likes, like straws, because this will make the medicine - the impairment - more tolerable. Uuurgh, it’s so tragic I love it.
And it’s even more tragic, if we consider that even after billions of years, even if he talks about his doctor and the medicine as something bad that wanted to “blind” him, Bill never forgot the straws. He still loves the straws he was using so much, to the point he still gave them a place in his book.
But since there’s always room on the angst train, also think that by making him blind, Billy would’ve probably stopped talking about these visions (at least, according to his parents). And if he stopped, it would’ve been easier for him to fit into society. He would’ve followed the rules and standards. He was a Regular shape after all, so if they took away that hidden-and-yet-so-present pieces of Irregularity he had, he could’ve become a respectable member of their society. One who didn’t go around, talking about weird things no one could see. Things that were against the law.
Again, it’s not me saying this, it’s Bill:
“Technically, talking about a “third” dimension was illegal in my world.”
This makes Bill’s character EVEN MORE fascinating. He could’ve been the Apostle of the Third Dimension. He could’ve spoken to everyone, because he had something of everyone - he could’ve been a bridge between Regulars and Irregulars, because he was both. He could’ve changed his world or died as a martyr.
But in the end, he chose the third option.
And we will talk about it in the next post.
See you soon with the fourth and final post on this part.
Next post ->
(How about a coffee? ☕)
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