Discover Top Posts Tagged with #wilbu

Psychoanalysing Kids’ Show Characters For No Real Reason At All 3/3: Wilbur Robinson from Meet the Robinsons

I once considered climbing into the Discourse Ring and getting into a debate w someone over wether or not Wilbur’s a Slytherin but i thought better of it because we’re all going to die and Hogwarts houses are worse than the MBTI types and who cares it’s just fun. But for the record: i don’t think he is and the reason is simple; it’s because he’s not ambitious. He’s too afraid to be.

He’s extremely intelligent, very witty and fairly adaptable to complete disaster. Everything for him is about performance, he’s a perfectionist and he goes out of his way to try everything: sports, checkers, math, sculpture, acting, knitting, gif-making. All the time and he has to be the best at everything he does but when he finds that there’s something he can’t do, he’ll dismiss it like nothing really matters in the grand scheme of it all. He doesn’t wanna say anything about it lest he confront his family’s gung-ho opinion on failure. And the thing is: the Robinson’s celebration of failure predicates an expectation of trying, of constantly working and you know what? He doesn’t want to try. He’s too scared to go after anything and he’s certainly weighed down by all the unspoken pressure of having a famous family of prodigies.

Sometimes he wishes there were rules he could follow so he could be the best at life but that doesn’t really work with his family’s complete lack of boundaries. I think there’s a part of Wilbur that will never truly grow up and not just because he’s spoilt or that he’ll always be freakishly close with his parents but also because he’s still waiting around for people to tell him what to do. I have a very specific image of him as an adult doing weird shit to compensate for how immature he feels. Like, he’ll make his house all black, no colour, he wears a tux and slicks his hair back with GOBS of hairgel, he has a fancy car he never uses but likes to show off because look how clean it is! Of course, even though he thrives on rules and fulfilling expectations, he’s still very selective on what rules he’ll follow because again: if he thinks it’s dumb or if it’ll negatively impact his rep, he’s not touching it with a ten-foot pole.

He’s very easily bored and gets distracted all the time (also hd him as having ADDD or ADHD). He’s deliberately getting himself into trouble and pushing people’s buttons as a way to act out. But again he’s very charming and very observant. He likes to play dumb but he’s secretly paying attention to everything about everyone and he knows exactly what will tick them off and what won’t. And given the right circumstances he can be a genuinely caring and empathetic person.

see also: an old meta i wrote on why Lewis became Wilbur’s best friend so soon

#meet the robinsons #mtr #disney #wilbur robinson #wilbur #analysis