I Ramble About The Ending For A Long Time
ok hello i am insane yes yes
however when else are you going to see me write c!crime meta
what’s important first off is that the emotional core of the story is still there. that’s the only reason why this works for me. this was a story about two bored brothers who make a story that turns into a nation together, and under that it’s about communication and loyalty and the strain mental illness places on a relationship and underneath even that it’s a story about two streamers in a pandemic who wanted content and to make each other laugh.
that is never undermined or taken less than 100% seriously; it’s the emotional core of the whole thing. as wild as it gets and as bold choices are made, both wilburs love both tommys and vice versa.
it’s a similar story with the line at the end: “I never did quite forgive myself” isn’t undermined, isn’t played for laughs. The argument c!crime have is incredibly well done and people will write actual analysis about that so you should go read it, but the gist of it is that c!crime are what they’ve always been: more than a bit unhealthy, perpetually arguing, but never quite willing to give up on each other.
with that being said, I felt like that was what I wanted out of the finale achieved. now to get into the wild parts.
the interesting part for me is how c!wilbur’s insane mindset is, for the first time, actually challenged and beat.
we’ve been saying for months that one of c!wilbur’s biggest issues is that his paranoia manifests in believing he is in a story, that there are roles like heroes and villains, that he has to play his part and there is nothing he can do about it. he’s his own self-fulfilling prophecy, he takes himself incredibly seriously, and most importantly, he is aware of the audience.
and nothing could break that. everyone around wilbur confirmed to his narrative, letting his vague statements that were clearly a narrative foreshadowing to suicide slip by. he’s getting swallowed up again by his own story, he is the one putting chekov’s gun on the wall, never quite saying something, but implying just enough that he was willing it into reality.
(he does the same thing in season 1, remember? he tells everyone he’s going to press the button enough times that by the end he feels like he has to because he’s foreshadowed it, because it’s who he is now. eret said it was never meant to be and thus it wasn’t. if you’re in an improv rp and you know it, speaking things is enough to make them real.)
and it almost works again! he almost follows the exact same trajectory of self-deprecation and sealing his fate. except. tommy’s not taking it this time.
tommy, having gone through everything he’s gone through, finally gets to win this. he looks the entire force of wilbur’s simultaneously self-aggrandizing and deprecating mindset dead in the eye and says tell me what you’re fucking talking about.
he says the words! he looks at wilbur and says we’ve both been in this story before, I know what you’re doing, I know who you are and what this is and I’m not going to let it happen again. tell me, are you going to kill yourself? he enters into wilbur’s spiral and says this can’t be redemption if you still won’t be honest with me and you can’t leave without apologizing.
he gets right to the core, no subtext, with all the blunt honesty he’s ever had, and c!wilbur, worn down from fighting and apologizing and the exhaustion of it all, finally gives in. he stops lying.
his backstory was never cool. he was a gas station attendee, never any sort of leader before coming to the smp, and his jacket was just another uniform. he isn’t even european. he somehow sailed here from a landlocked state, because why not. this is Not the type of backstory for the type of person he’s trying to build himself up to be, this isn’t the fit for the genre at all!
but insanely, impossibly, it’s true. it’s canon. just like the fish fucking and the fridge mom and everything else. it is ridiculous! and with that, it’s the realization that wilbur’s story has always been a serious character with serious feelings in ridiculous circumstance. his very real suicide was attempted via looney-tunes-esque sticks of dynamite in a pile, his ghost talks in a high-pitched voice and gives out blue dye. none of this undermines the seriousness of c!wilbur’s feelings, but it does undermine how he views himself as some great evil out of Game of Thrones.
he died and got revived by a book! his depression fort was named pogtopia! he has always existed just under the threshold of ridiculousness by just how seriously he takes it all, how seriously everyone takes it.
and c!tommy has always loved the person under the narrative he paints, and that’s why, at the end of it all, he can get through to him. tommy knows the story, he loves parts of it (l’manburg, the family, etc), but he doesn’t love this part, and for once, he gets to choose. he pushes and pushes and says you love me enough to not shy away from this, I am banking on you loving me enough not to push me away again, and he’s completely right! he breaks the cycle by being the same kid he’s always been.
and so wilbur’s end is ridiculous. it’s absurd, but it’s not him killing himself again. it’s not drenched in the belief that everything he made should be destroyed, but full of callbacks and nods to who he was. he never did quite forgive himself, but he’s not looking to the audience for forgiveness anymore, either.
there are no more looks into the camera, and the book he gives for tommy is for his eyes alone, unlike every other speech like apology we’ve seen so far. he says things that the audience won’t reach. he invites us, one last time, to look upon his works and despair, to tell us that nothing remains. but he is still there, even if there is no story to watch. he is not part of a story anymore. the cameras are cut, and he survived. he is nothing more than himself.
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