THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENED.

i will never get over the way wilbur used his dsmp character to explore themes revolving around perceiving yourself through a narrative and projecting conventions of storytelling and media onto your own life out of a need to become part of something greater and more “beautiful” than yourself. the complicated relationship between life and art: which imitates which? the attempt to aestheticize your own suffering in the hope of creating a “masterpiece” that makes it all somehow worth it. convincing yourself that you are a character on a stage and must play your part so you don’t have to admit to yourself that you’re tired and hurting and it’s easier than putting in the work to heal. just. god. c!wilbur’s story means so much to me and wilbur soot is a fucking genius

got a good suit for a good game💅

I don’t think cc!Dream’s audio is meant to make c!Dream sympathetic. It is an audio practice of c!Dream, and c!Dream is known to be an extremely unreliable narrator, especially when trying to make it out that “woe is me, I was pushed to this”. I think c!Dream is definitely sympathetic, however not because he was pushed to this point, but because of how lonely he is and how determined he is to fulfill a futile plan.

So yeah, cool audio, but it isn’t exactly reliable, considering it’s coming from c!Dream. And yes, he can be honest- brutally sometimes- however, I think this is the time he is choosing to twist his actions and make it seem like he’s a victim to his own choices. Humans aren’t snakes, we’re aware of choices much more. Snakes bite to protect, and humans can blow up; can exile; can destroy, but that isn’t to protect.

the fact c!tommy said he felt like a fucking pet in exile of all things always breaks my heart. like, he also described himself as a toy and a puppet but for some reason that one just always fucks me up the most. i guess bc it really shows that his insistence that c!dream hates him is a desperate survival mechanism? like, you don’t hate a pet. it’s obviously an incredibly fucked up demeaning and dehumanising way to treat a person, but it’s not a way you treat someone you hate. because, like, obviously c!dream doesn’t hate c!tommy. he's got very complicated thoughts on him, but he doesn’t hate him, even if he hates and resents parts of him.

and like, deep down, c!tommy knows that? he gets c!dream a whole lot more than he lets on, and he knows that c!dream on some level sees him as a friend, even if that’s in an incredibly unhealthy and abusive way. but he has to convince himself that c!dream hates him. because if c!dream doesn’t hate him, then what’s the point of even struggling against his conditioning and trying to heal? c!tommy is desperate for friendship and validation, and he feels abandoned by everyone else. if he lets himself ever believe that c!dream will ever provide him that stability and affection he desperately longs for, he'd fall back into his exile mindset so quickly, because he doesn’t care if he’s tortured or hurt- he openly acknowledges that exile was torturous to him even when he’s still struggling with seeing c!dream as a benevolent friend in bedrock bros- because he thinks he deserves it. he just doesn’t want to be alone.

Art by Yi Jiaqin

Athena, watching her “Warrior of the mind” give his IP address, passport information, location, full name, and serial code

My complicated thoughts on c!Wilbur's ending (I tried to make this short)

For me, there are things about Wilbur's ending I still don't vibe with because they'd need to be more expanded on to be effective

The whole last arc still feels like a big flop because in the end Wilbur just kinda got stomped all over until in the end he followed Phil's worst advice for the worst moment and went away with that idea of "If they don't forgive me I have to go", and Phil's erroneous message was just kinda never really defied by the narrative

I still wish he would've had a moment to yell at someone and be rightfully mad because holy shit he should've, a scene to parallel Ghostbur's rightful anger at phil during Doomsday that felt to be so easily set up with Wilbur being reminded a few times that Phil, Techno and Dream did doomsday and the crater wasn't from the 16th, and with him having to confront and be pretty disappointed in it just being "his grave" when he had no grave, lighting up at the idea that L'manburg was worth enough to rebuild after he was gone in his conversation with Tubbo on the 3rd of August 2021 stream

The book for Eret and half of what was said in it regarding Eret is still shit in the context of my own Judas being a thing, with Eret only chastising Wilbur for "not apologizing well enough" when Wilbur never did anything to Eret aside from rightfully not trusting them once Eret murdered everyone for their own selfish gain and continued to do shit to the L'manburgians after (which is all in lost VODs and this isn't Eret crit centric, so I won't go too far into this, but the towers to make them feel watched, something like covering the sun on their territory to make mobs spawn, etc). Eret never apologized for real, Eret admitted to wanting Wilbur to be a sort of puppet leader in a new country to essentially make Eret a dictator, as she later said that democracy wasn't good, the only reason why she told Wilbur not to jump off the bridge was because "think of all the resources I wasted trying to revive you", she made the empty gesture of throwing away the crown for like the third time while losing no real power or status, etc

And I don't like that in defending the ending so much in the most literal sense some people have just disregarded what in my opinion makes the ending more interesting, which is that the Utah desert can be seen as a metaphor for the afterlife, but an afterlife in which Wilbur went to his imagined desert instead of the limbo he thought he deserved to suffer in, because that possible interpretation was clearly done intentionally with the Eret book, the Ozimandias callback, the "I never did forgive myself", and we know that Wilbur wants us to analyze the ending as he himself said it

So I understand those who didn't like it, had some problems with it or were dissatisfied, because I myself could never be satisfied by it, because to have that I would need everyone else who isn't Wilbur to own up to their own shit and make it explicit that Wilbur isn't and wasn't at fault for everything

Have Eret actually say a real sorry for killing him and all L'manburgians and it to have weight for real, have Niki own up to the fact that she was never abandoned, but she did betray the L'manburgians multiple times, have Fundy and Wilbur have a talk about the Pogtopia buttons and Fundy disowning Wilbur as a father, have Phil own up to and suffer consequences for Doomsday, let Wilbur actually confront the reality of Doomsday with Phil there, have them talk about the 16th, have Wilbur come closer to an understanding with Ghostbur from that going further than just sending Friend to him, get some deeper understanding of Ghostbur as a part of himself, have Wilbur see that self-love isn't letting yourself be beaten down and stepped over for the comfort of those who wronged you, have him see and others confront that he isn't just a scapegoat and he isn't the source of all evil, have that mythical reddit post that put this all so clearly guide the steps to this

But I get that it all would hinge on all these characters with pretty bad writing in general getting their shit together and actually being written well for longer than just one stream, things should've started changing with them all from hitting on 16 onwards and that just wouldn't happen, so in the context of what cc!Wilbur could do by himself, it's pretty good, and the open ended-ness and little more metaphorical pieces such as the nice afterlife in the desert, the bandage being gone without us ever getting a proper explanation of it, Ghostbur getting Friend sent to him by Wilbur even if Wilbur will forever separate himself from the idea of Ghostbur makes it all feel like at least c!Wilbur himself is... Ok. He isn't doing incredibly good, he still doesn't forgive himself, but hell, he's ok, be it at peace in a literal place or the afterlife, in the end he went off with a smile, he made his decision and got at least Tommy to talk with him one last time on ok-ish terms, in the end at least he knows that Tommy cares, even if it would've been much better to have more

More people involved, more explained and shown, more time, but alas this is it

Halo by Artem Chebokha

Five of Cups by Ivan Onokhin

c!discduo in their double life arc