this is my evil essay on why ones writing is good actually and the mischaracterization i see is genuinely insane
lets start off as controversial as possible!
tpot 20, and a large chunk of one's motivation, is about disability.
for clarification, i am an able-bodied person. this reading is intended to be inoffensive but i legitimately see one's treatment in tpot 20 as ableist. in universe, not out of universe.
armless objects are very common. algebraliens, however, almost always have arms and legs. even non-canon ones, like pi and infinity, have arms.
one does not. she's visually shown to struggle using her legs as such, something armless objects dont have issue with.
after one gets her power, she doesnt use her legs the same way. the closest to that is when she turns them into hands, which she wasn't shown doing pre-yoylite.
one mostly uses her powers to hover objects. four is also shown to do this, presumably out of laziness, but for One this looks like an accessibility thing.
i really hope tpot doesnt end with her losing her powers for this reason. it'd be like ripping the wheelchair out from under someone. whether theyve done bad things or not, i hope we can all agree thats not right.
moving on to ones terrible actions. which are, in fact, terrible! one isnt a good person, but she's not comically evil, either.
one was never shown empathy back on her home planet. its the entire point of tpot 20.
when she shows the yoylite to three, she freaks out at her interest in it. only when three mentions being a duo does she soften up.
one sees herself as completely useless beyond what she can do for or give to others.
her attempts to socialize with two and four ended with them acting callously to her. three only hung out with her because one found a meteor. from whats shown, it does feel like one needs to be utile for them to appreciate her. she knows this, which is why she blew up at three when they first got to know eachother.
and then three proves her right. from what we can currently tell, she forgot about one the next morning and focused on the yoylite first. one was tossed aside for Cool Rock. she was only invited to be part of the group because she was useful.
this already pisses her off, but then three says "nothing has to change."
none of them care about their mistreatment of one. when confronted with how the norm involves her being ignored, no one says a thing. they want to move on from it, but one still doesnt feel wanted, because before she found the yoylite, she wasnt.
"Who's to say I don't find another cool thing, and you ruin that, too?"
one doesnt know what she is without something special to her name. her self-worth being based on this isnt sustainable, as she'd end up in a constant loop of needing to find new things to keep herself interesting to others.
the rest cant fathom her breakdown being partly their fault, so its easier to lock her up.
one's time spent in the moon makes her mental health infinitely worse. it's her worst nightmare come to life.
she's shown to be unstable even before this happens, so more isolation does nothing to help.
four talks about how the imprisonment was a form of rehabilitation, but he never mentions how long she was MEANT to be in there. if we take the subscriber specials as semi-canon and they've been around for millenia, it was probably a lot longer than fourteen years.
being alone for over a decade with nothing but her own rage to stew in does nothing to dissuade one's worldview. she was worthless compared to the yoylite, and once everyone had power, she had nothing to offer. she had no way of knowing if she'd be tossed aside again, since nobody liked her for who she was.
this explains why she treats the contestants the way she does. one considers herself useless beyond what she can give people, so why not treat others with the same (lack of) respect?
basically, ones treatment of others is a projection of how SHE has been treated. we've already seen how she projects onto a lot of them, such as basketball and pencil. personally, i think she does the same to all of them.
multiple of one's victims have been armless, and her early deals were offering a chance to "fix" physical disabilities, like with ice cube or fanny.
one being an outcast is part of the disability thing, btw. when three, an able-bodied person, is hurt in an accident, everybody worries about her. shes no longer "normal." but one, who was born different, does not recieve the same sympathy. she's always been that way, so the pity is non-existent. she's treated as something easy to ignore, and when said treatment is brought up, they ignore that too. because it makes them uncomfortable.
@thrillergen (i hope youre okay with tags) brought up to me that algebraliens have a history of isolation as punishment or a way to solve their problems.
fifteen doesnt like others, so she self-isolates in the woods. fourteen is a danger, so he's put in a cage.
even three said one should take some time to herself. instead of talking to her about WHY shes angry, everyone wanted her to be alone, which is what made her upset to begin with.
after one is imprisoned, everyone else splits up to protect the yoylites power. but they already defeated her as a group; theyd probably be alright if they stuck together. regardless, their first instinct is that they NEED to be alone. all of them.
neither nine nor six seem to enjoy this in the long run.
when four gets upset near the end of bfb, he leaves everyone to exist in his own head.
and as a last resort, despite the earthlings knowing he needs other people around, he escapes to the sun. we love onefour parallels here.
four pushing x away during the split is another example of algebraliens self-isolating or isolating eachother.
so, i suppose thats it. not really about one by the end there, but moreso about why everyone else treated her the way they did. even if everyone did horrible things in the events shown in tpot 20, their reasons for it are clearly shown.
edit! thrillergen cooking again in the replies (cant use my laptop to add images atm)
"so. interesting bits from tpot 20 i found on my recent rewatch. around 26 minutes in snowball says "now i'm an armless wimp!" before one moves from off the wall. also bell was taken off of her string for the deal meaning she couldn't move"
i sincerely think this is all intentional. happy january 1st everyOne
