I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion so much as an opinion that any normal person would be too distracted by actual relevant things to even consider thinking about but I have this weird peeve when reading fic or whatever when a character refers to Twisty by that name..it always gives me this ‘'bzuh??” moment of wondering where they learned it from.
Like, they could have learned it from Twisty himself, certainly. Just because he can’t communicate verbally doesn’t mean he couldn’t have written it down or conveyed it through some other means but, at the same time, there’s nothing to suggest that he did. The audience doesn’t learn his name in the text of the show, only through the credits and the extra textual material, such as the advertisements that named him. Later on we find out even the other members of his circus won’t dignify him with a name, instead using derogatory phrases like ‘simpleton’. This seemed to suggest to me the degree to which Twisty’s circumstances have disenfranchised him from his own story. He can’t speak up for himself to the freaks at the time of the original accusation because his lack of eloquence and his intellectual disability result in his words not being considered trustworthy, he literally loses the ability to speak for himself thanks to his failed suicide attempts, and then as he shifts into madness there’s the suggestion that he’s separating himself from everything that he was aside from “clown”. Additionally, his being deprived of speech makes him even more ominous and enigmatic to the audience, mute and looming in the darkness, easy to acribe monstrous intent to his disturbing choices.
Then when Mordrake finally allows him the power of speech(or rather, the power to be understood) for the first time via what appears to be a telepathic connection, Twisty never names himself despite freely telling the rest of his story. Similarly, Mordrake never calls him by what would be a given name despite him theorhetically having access to that information. Instead he names him with possessive honorifics; “my marvel”, “my wonder” with a reverence that evokes a shade of Frankenstein and his infamous Creature. As Twisty is the perfect nightmare monster to the audience, he becomes Mordrake’s true freak, a bizarre and novel specimen, because his narrative is subject to the whims of those who are audience to it. Even when he’s speaking for himself, he doesn’t truly get to decide who he is.
Finally, some authors seem to suggest that Dandy ascribed the name Twisty to him, suggesting that’s why he’s named that way in the credits but not by anyone else. Honestly, that would be kind of cute in terms of the bizarre but ambiguously intimate nature of their relationship but it doesn’t quite fit for me. ‘Twisty’ could easily be a play on ‘twisted’ (and Dandy would certainly think himself clever for contriving such a thing) but the actual clown element of the name, the fact that he makes(twists) balloon animals, is never something Dandy sees him do as far as the audience is concerned(though it does overlap with a headcanon of mine). Even more telling than that is the fact that Dandy never calls him by the name ‘Twisty’, rather he calls him ‘Clown’ as if it’s his title. And the naming and renaming of people is something that’s central to Dandy’s interpersonal relationships. In some classic schoolyard bullying taken to the real world, he gives people nasty little nicknames for his own amusement (note him calling Maggie ‘tiny tits’ while he’s threatening to dismember her). He calls the freaks almost exclusively by their stage names as a means of dismissing them and establishing his power over them.
But he’s adamant about calling the twins by their individual names and treating them as different people(one of the few decent qualities he exhibits) despite the fact that most of the characters identify or dismiss them primarily as a unit. If they are a unit to Dandy, however, they’re almost always “my twins” or “my girls”. He also is inclined towards addressing his conversation partner by name more than necessary as per the conversational tactic of establishing control or dominance, something he repeatedly does with his mother, Dora, and Regina. When he does this with Twisty, he simply says “Clown”. Certainly if it he had another name for Twisty, he wouldn’t be shy to use it. Instead Clown is simply a clown, possessive implied only if you want it to be. Dandy sees a clown so that’s what Twisty is. Not only a clown but the clown; through usage it becomes a title the same way Lobsterboy is Jimmy’s. Your name is what you are because that’s how Dandy sees you. Clown is a bit more important than Jimmy, of course, being an aspirational figure for Dandy. All that is death, all that is clown...a mantle unto itself.
Tldr: The various meta in play behind the naming of Twisty and the means with which his name is revealed are super interesting to me and I wish people explored and experimented with them more instead of just taking the one name for granted.
