In Defence of c!Niki - a Four Part Analysis of Every Arc
People who didn’t watch C!Niki see, in the fandom, a big sister type character with girlboss energy who wants to kill a child. Niki isn’t that. She has a well-written narrative which focusses a lot on her relationships with others. Here is me breaking it down!
PART ONE: c!Niki’s Early Days
PART TWO: c!Niki’s Rebellion
PART THREE: c!Niki’s Disillusionment (you are here)
PART FOUR: c!Niki’s Healing
TW FOR THIS SECTION: brief mention of sh, derealisation, a lot of discussion on grief and death. Let me know if I should add more tws
I don’t think c!Niki’s disillusionment arc started on Doomsday, randomly. I think it started on the day of the festival, when Niki watched her friend die, was chased out of her home, and saw how much her best friend had changed.
Despite her anger at Tubbo for his speech (which sounded very pro-Schlatt) she still told Schlatt to let him out once Schlatt and Quackity started to box him in. It still had not been revealed quite yet that Tubbo was a spy, yet Niki still stood up for Tubbo regardless of how she felt about him. That’s the thing about Niki. She is a good person with sound morals who will support people even if their views don’t align with hers, because she knows what’s right and what’s wrong and she won’t let ‘wrong’ happen to anyone.
Once Techno killed him, Schlatt literally fucking exiled her.
N: You killed him!
S: yeah, I did. I did fucking kill him, Niki.
N: you are so cruel- how could you do that? After everything he has done for you?!
S: he’s been a thorn in my side since-
N: I DONT EVEN WANT TO BE HERE.
S: he-
N: I DON’T EVEN WANT TO BE HERE!
S: […] you can leave if you want
N: ….Where am I supposed to go?
Manberg may not be Niki’s home but L’Manberg is and it always will be. That’s why the thought of leaving for good hurt her so much. Wilbur comes out into the open after she says this, and he defends her.
S: you really crawled up here on the day of my festival, celebrating my country. That you are not a part of. And you started- you started crying.
W: You sounded like you were gonna murder another person.
S: no, I was only gonna murder Tubbo.
W: you sounded like you were gonna go for Niki.
S: he’s the only person- well I mean, Niki..
N: what?
S: I might murder Niki, actually. I might murder her.
Wilbur tells her to run. Fundy gives Schlatt arrows but he and Quackity tell Schlatt not to do it, all the while Niki’s getting chased out of the country she used to love. This solidifies for her the fact that she truly has lost everything. Ponk chased her down and he killed her - Ponk, who a few streams before, Niki had called a friend. Earlier Techno had also killed her, when he shot at the audience after killing Tubbo. According to the wiki neither of those are canon deaths but I think they should be. At the very least, being killed by Ponk should be.
She joined Pogtopia that day, and Niki already had heard about Wilbur’s plans from Tommy. He, her and Tubbo had all vowed to get L’Manberg back and at this point in time, Tommy was the person she trusted the most. Her relationship with Tubbo had been ruined because of her thinking she was on Schlatt’s side - and even now that she knew he hadn’t been, it didn’t change the fact that he did not stick up for her while she was there. Her relationship with Wilbur was still a close one but she was scared for him and worried for L’Manberg’s future. But Tommy hadn’t wronged her, and she knew she could trust him to help with Wilbur.
Her birthday party was where she really saw the extent of Wilbur’s mental decline first hand and was completely powerless in stopping it. The day had been going so well, and she’d been having fun, until Wilbur went to blow up Manberg. Niki had to beg him to stop playing the anthem and Quackity talked him down from blowing it up, but Niki was terrified.
This is when Niki began working on her Secret City - intended to be a safe space away from the conflict, or a last resort for refugees if the war went badly.
On November 16th, Niki was hopeful, especially after Techno revealed his armoury. That day, Niki also defended Eret when they were accused of being the traitor, saying she trusted them and that they helped her. Once again, proving her loyalty and the fact she was grateful for people who stuck by her side.
We all know what happened later. After they got L’Manberg back, and were cleaning up, Niki found the TNT Wilbur had placed under the podium. She made sure nobody else saw it and she hid it again. Because after everything, Niki still believed in Wilbur. She was still loyal to him. She still saw the good in him and trusted that he wouldn’t. But he did.
She’d kept her promise, she’d been loyal to him and L’Manberg, and it didn’t change anything. She didn’t manage to help anything. And Wilbur, the one person Niki believed would always be there for her, no matter what, betrayed her. And she couldn’t even ask him why. So after that she was left hopeless and never wanted to let anyone in again. But as much as Niki didn’t want to, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Tommy reminded the L’Manbergians that the L’Mantree was still there. And I think Niki found that comforting, at the very least. She asked Tubbo what they were going to do with Wilbur’s body and his only response was “let him rot”. She and Tommy were the only ones who didn’t laugh.
At this point Tommy became a constant, for Niki. He’d been there since she joined, he was the only one who understood that she still wanted Wilbur back, and in her eyes he was able to take on his role in the sense of inspiring them all.
So, of course it hit her hard when he tried to blame her for burning down George’s house. Then, he’s exiled and the next time she heads from him it’s because he blew up the community house - we know he didn’t, but Niki didn’t. She begins to see Tommy as someone who just causes problems on the SMP, nothing more. She thinks he’s arrogant and a nuisance and that he doesn’t care for anyone.
When it comes to Niki’s character it’s vital that we understand - she has been through so much pain that got overlooked by everyone around her. At this point, she was poor, grieving, and felt as if nobody in New L’Manberg listened to her. She was going through the lowest point in her life and nobody in that nation seemed to care.
And she couldn’t hate everyone for it so she needed someone to blame and that happened to be Tommy. He didn’t deserve it but he was an easy target. And it’s true that he wasn’t kind to her, but he wasn’t the only one, and he was obviously going through his own things. But Niki was angry and she needed somewhere to put her anger. Is that fair? Not at all. But it’s what happened.
N: L’Manberg has not been L’Manberg. For many weeks. Maybe even months, maybe even.. maybe even, I don’t know.. since the start? […] I want the people to realise L’Manberg is not what they think it is. I want them to open their eyes and stop being in this circle.. in this circle of fighting for it. Because that will not bring us anywhere.
Do I even need to say anything? She fought for it for so long, on her own, and lost everything and everyone anyway.
On Doomsday, she spoke to Ranboo.
N: Do you.. do you really think L’Manberg should be safe today? …Ranboo, I will- If you think that we should fight for L’Manberg today, I will fight with you. Because I believe in you. And I always believed in you.
R: I think we should. […] the thing is, if we don’t fight with them, then what are we showing them? We’re showing them that we never cared about them.
N: .. i care about them, I really do. But I got.. hurt by them… They always talk over me, Ranboo. You know how that feels.
R: yeah. But like you remember yesterday, sometimes you just have to get louder.
N: You’re right..
R: sometimes you just have to get louder until they have no choice but to hear you.
And good god, isn’t that exactly what she did? Something something, peaceful protest is ignored (striking at her bakery, not paying her taxes, verbally standing up to Schlatt). OSomething something, she got louder. (Burning down the L’Mantree, blowing up her bakery)
An underrated line from Doomsday though? Niki telling her chat that she needed to save Puffy. I think she was muted so you’d only hear the line if you were on her stream, but she tried to help Puffy after and seemed distressed that she couldn’t get to her. Puffychu crumbs.
She held it together until she saw Ghostbur, believing she was hallucinating and repeating to herself that Wilbur was gone and that he betrayed her. She doesn’t want to care, but she does. And the idea of Wilbur still existing terrifies her, because what does that say about her grief? And if her grief isn’t justified, then the things she’s done definitely aren’t. As long as Wilbur is dead, Niki feels like she has a reason for her anger.
During her meltdown Niki is rambling. ‘Wilbur is dead’ becomes ‘L’Manberg is dead’ which becomes ‘L’Manberg is gone’ which becomes ‘I am gone’ and ‘I am L’Manberg’. This reveals a lot about Niki, even if it may seem nonsensical at first glance.
I’ve made a post before about how for crime boys, L’Manberg is interchangeable with the other person (For Tommy, it’s Wilbur. For Wilbur, it’s Tommy.) And I think that this is the same thing for Niki. L’Manberg is Wilbur. Wilbur couldn’t live without L’Manberg, and L’Manberg isn’t the same without Wilbur.
Then, she is gone and she is L’Manberg. Niki isn’t the same person she used to be and she’s starting to think that she can’t live without L’Manberg either, not happily, anyway. But at the same time, she helps to destroy it because the memories are too much to bare, and all it does is remind her of all the times she’s been hurt there. She can’t see the good in it anymore.
Destroying her own bakery was somewhere between emotional self-harm and trying to separate herself from L’Manberg as much as possible. There could’ve also been a sense of survivors guilt? Everyone else’s homes and things were destroyed but Niki’s bakery was untouched, and she found that really unsettling.
She talks to Jack about why she burnt down the tree, saying it was because she’s lost everyone.
J: that’s not a very good way of going ‘hey, I wanna be friends again’, burning down their sacred tree.
N: i don’t want to be friends with any of them again! Have you seen them?
J: then why do you care?!
N: because it hurt me! […] we both have been ignored by all of them all the time. We walk behind them slowly and-and carefully because they will ignore us all the time but we wanna be part! We wanna be part- we’re like little puppies, aren’t we?! Like little puppies, just walking and walking. But they’re never going to see us. All we are for them is something to take something from. […] whats the difference between these people and us? When we lose something, we lost it. And we grieve it. And it will be a part of us. When they lose something? They move on and they find something new.
I feel like people who think c!Niki is badly written or don’t like her just watch this stream and think she is overreacting because they don’t know her lore. But none of this came out of nowhere.
The thing is, Niki was ignored throughout Manberg and New L’Manberg by Tubbo and Fundy and sometimes even Eret. Niki has had things taken from her by Schlatt and Tommy. She has seen everyone move on from Wilbur when she couldn’t.
I think the other characters did care about her - Wilbur definitely did and Tommy did too. Karl did, Eret did, Puffy did. But it’s so difficult for her to see that because the love is so quiet in comparison to everything else. She’s no longer an idealist, she can’t see it when it isn’t right in front of her. And that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. She’s not completely right, but she’s not wrong about being used and feeling unwanted. That did happen.
So why does this turn into hatred at Tommy? Like I said earlier - he was a constant. The only one she still had after Wilbur, but he didn’t seem like he cared about her. In Niki’s eyes he became just like the rest of them - he used her left, and then when he came back she thought he’d replaced Wilbur with Techno and was now replacing him with Tubbo.
(I’m not saying I think that’s what happened but it’s what Niki saw. This part of my analysis is also partly speculation and partly based on things Niki said after the fact, because I can’t find the vod where she and Jack decided to target Tommy specifically, I think there’s a missing one between Niki’s Doomsday vod and the one where Jack tells her about the nukes.)
She directs her anger at him also because it gives her an ally. Jack blames Tommy for most of what’s happened to him, because Tommy resulted in him losing his second life; if Niki agrees that it’s his fault then she has Jack. So unconsciously she starts directing her anger more towards him.
The thing about Tommy is that he’s loud. He’s annoying. He can be rude. He doesn’t take things seriously, especially when he’s being painted in the wrong, because he doesn’t know how to handle it so he just deflects.
That makes him a really easy target for anger. But the vast majority of what happened to Niki was never Tommy’s fault. She blames him for Doomsday, she’s angry that he used her, and she’s processing her grief of Wilbur through hating Tommy. That’s why she does what she does.
Summary: Wilbur comes back after you've been dealing with the aftermath of his death.
Warnings: I don't think so, other than grieving??
Pronouns: g/n :)
Days were all merging together. You chose not to have people around as you stayed in your simple cabin, passing hours and days reading books and fishing.
After Wilbur had died, you were broken, you were numb, and to harsh, maybe a little bit useless.
When Ghostbur appeared, the numbness you had an understanding with turned into full on rage, sadness, and confusion.
He was Wilbur, but he wasn’t, and if you couldn’t see him again in whole, did you really want him? With Ghostbur, no. It was too fresh, too soon. How were you supposed to come to terms with a death, when a translucent replica was smiling at you?
So you went away. Left alone to deal with your emotions, waiting for life to do what life does, and move on. Without you.
You stood in the quaint kitchen you had built for yourself. Looking out the slightly tilted window at the ocean nearby. Waves crashed against the rocks, you watched as the large ones dominated the rest, crashing onto the jagged surface, spraying salt water into the air above. The sky grew progressively darker, an orange tint overtaking clouds placed in front of the sun.
Your eyelids grew heavy as the picture in front of you blurred together, you were no longer focused on the waves as your mind felt weightless and your thoughts were gone.
That was until a slight motion out the window to the left caught your attention.
It was a person. It wasn’t Tommy, Tubbo, Techno, or even Phil. Your mind must’ve been playing tricks on you, the tall man with a slow swagger directed towards your cabin might’ve been a hallucination if it wasn’t for the bright white streak of hair that snapped any blurry thoughts into a focused consciousness.
As he grew closer to the window, his face came into focus. You locked eyes as he smiled at you. It wasn’t Ghostburs smile, it wasn’t Wilburs smile, it was the smile of a maniac. It was like the smile of a doll, whoever created it meant well, but it comes across as someone who would snap your neck at a moment’s notice. But it’s kept safe, because though it is frightening and intimidating, there’s a tie to it that overshadows any nightmares that are stemmed from it.
You didn’t move, your feet were planted firmly on the oak planks that made up your floor. You didn’t smile and wave. You didn’t run to lock the doors and windows, shutting him physically out of your life, as you had tried to do emotionally.
Your heart only began to race as he started to walk around the side of your house to the door, out of sight.
You heard the scratchy metal knob being twisted, followed by a creak of the door hinge that echoed through the house.
“Hello?” a voice rang out.
You recognized dull foot falls making its way to each room. They progressively grew louder as they eventually came to a stop.
Your eyes remained screwed shut, and you began to lose feeling in your hands. You head was spinning, your body felt fiery and chilled all at once as a shallow breath was released.
Your eyes remained screwed shut, and you began to lose feeling in your hands. You head was spinning, your body felt fiery and chilled all at once as a shallow breath was released.
“Y/n”
Your shoulder flinched slightly at his voice.
You heard more foot falls as he stepped closer to you.
Your now sweaty palms unclenched the counter and pressed themselves flat on top. You opened your eyes, half expecting it to trigger some form of a monster to jump at your face. Your legs were weak but you began to turn yourself to face the voice you were conflicted by.
“No” you muttered in disbelief.
“Yes y/n” He replied with a smug, satisfied air about him.
“No, you can’t be alive, you died. I saw you die”
“Well y/n not all things stay the same, we know that better than anyone, with all that we’ve been through together”
“No. We haven’t been through anything together, you’re not Wilbur. You're not”
He just quirked his brow and smirked at you, that dumb smirk, you hated him. You absolutely despised him for trying to replace the person you used to know.
But he had the same smirk
It was the same smirk that he gave you the night before he died, he was already gone at that point, you just hadn’t realized it.
He wasn’t Wilbur, he had the same voice that sang you to sleep when you had both been worried about your friends, about the future of your country in its early days, before everything took a turn for the worse.
But he wasn’t Wilbur, he had the same posture, the posture that would lean against the doorways when he listened to your rants about how you didn’t feel you could trust your allies, before everything took a turn for the worse.
He wasn’t Wilbur, even though everything in your body wanted to run towards him and engulf him in a hug as his arms looped around your torso squeezing back, that’s what would’ve happened, before everything took a turn for the worse.
He was so familiar in every sense of the word. Everything about the man in front of you screamed home.
But then you remember the reason yours is gone.
He looks at you with a grin on his face and a glint in his eyes that you loath.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been gone? And this is how I’m welcomed. A firm handshake would do y/n.”
“Oh you want a welcome?”
“I've been through hell lately y/n, quite literally.”
“Not for long enough if you ask me.”
“Trust me, it was a lot longer for me than it has been for you.” The arrogant look slowly dissipated from his face as this sentence left his mouth.
“You should be dead.”
He tsked at you and slightly tilted his head as he took a step towards you. “Well that's not very nice you know” he said as the smirk reappeared.
“Do you think this is funny?”
"Well of course not but I believe I’m allowed to be at least a little happy after what I’ve been through."
“What you've been through?” you scoffed at him “What about me? What about Tommy? You destroyed, actually destroyed everything, and you want to talk about what you've been through?”
“Maybe I didn’t iterate well enough y/n. I was in HELL.”
"No I understood you perfectly, I'm just saying that you should go back to where you're wanted, and give satan a lap dance or two."
He just laughed; you would've joined him if it wasn't for the underlying menace that was laced through it.
He shook his head. "Come along." He said as he walked away with an absurd smile on his face.
You continued to stand in the room alone.
'Alone'.
It's a word you had gotten used to saying. Wilbur died, and you were alone. You had come to accept that fate as your own.
But are you alone?
If Wilbur's alive, the person who had left you to defend yourself, was back.
Are you alone?
How many people are you with?
How many people were you with?
How many people would stand with you?
How many people will walk away?
Are you alone?
Are you lonely?
Those questions had a physical weight in your rib cage as you lay in bed at night with a man you once trusted pressed firmly against your back.
