I See Someone Made Wander A Sad Backstory

Long post, any commentary welcome

Okay confession time: I disliked Wander for years and now I'm realising that the only problem I have with him is that he is not called out on his bullshit/mistakes when it's really important.

I just feel like he is only shown as being in the wrong about small things. "He wants to help too much, even if people don't want it! He ignores his health to help others!"

But these are laughably small. Remindes me of when a person makes a character but they don't want to gives them any actual flaws so it's just "They are too kind/smart/etc".

Main problem (for me) is that Wander actually has big, intresting flaws with his character. But they are not explored. I cannot treat the episode about him trying to help people that are fine when. Everything else. I'm going to give 2 main examples that give me the most discomfort. You can skip if you understand.

1. Constant invasion of boundaries, to the point where "when he is a villain he deserves it" doesn't personally work for me. The entire fremergency episode.. Also the one where he and hater sang on stage. Why is he so weird about unconsious/not fully there Hater. He immediately makes him do/say things (in public or even on camera) that he would not say usually. Imagine someone you know is drunk so you take them in a public place to act like you are close while your buddy is filming that. I get Hater is a villain but damn... I'm not asking for a big callout or anything, can we at least not do the "it's so sad that he has to return :(" thing in the end.. Wander overstepping everyone's boundaries is so consistent it's a character trait, but it's mostly played for laughs/ignored/endorsed. It's not only villains... I remember this one animatic (scrapped/after credit scene, don't remember) where he pets Sylvia and his hand goes down to her tail so she has to physically stop him. Also a lot of other minor stuff, but.. I feel like this is more glaring than "oh he's just too sweet and kind".

2. The entire dominator.. Thing. Wander sees a trolley problem with the entire galaxy vs dominator (+hater stops being a villain), and decides he wants to save everyone. No matter how right you think he was, he did not achieve what he wanted. Dominator did not change. Hater did, but not complitely. But innocent people died. We can't just ignore that Hater has the power to stop Dominator, and one of the main reasons he didn't was because Wander was helping him out with Dominator. Look at Hater's face when Dominator laughs at his confession. He's not even surprised. He would 100% give up sooner if Wander wasn't hyping him up so much. Wander actually made sure that the only person capable of defeating Dominator was peaceful towards her for as long as he could. How many people lost their homes/died while him and Hater were busy with their crap? Again, I know this is a children's show. And yes, Wander is presented as being wrong, but un a really weird way. It's more about Dominator than her victims. It's more "Not everyone wants to change/be your friend/some people are just enemies" etc. The show shows (haha) that Wander was wrong, but the consequences are not in the picture. There are 2 elements to what happened: "Wander made the wrong call and many wrong decisions, AND many people died/lost their homes because of his decisions". The show only talks about the first part. It almost makes it look like if Dominator actually agreed to become friends, everything else would become okay.

Every time I rewatched the show I was thinking "Oh, yeah, this guy let countless people die because he wanted to solve the situation 100% ethically and gets away with it. Oh, he is very touchy without consent. Oh, he doesn't listen to his best friend and almost gets her killed. Oh, oh. Fuck this guy".

Now I think that it would be fine if it was adressed. There is no need to reduce/ignore his mistakes. Half of the main cast are villains (I personally consider (Wander, Sylvia, Hater and Peepers the main 4, people still love them. I love them! Not only that, we have Brad Starlight that satirises traditional heroes. Why doesn't the show apply at least some critical thinking towards Wander? Also, Sylvia is a hero too! She was a bounty hunter, she has anger management problems (where she is implied to hurt people in the way that a family friendly show can show (ep about the race)), she often "learns her lesson" if Wander is right.

Another thing.

Episodes where Wander is wrong are weirdly disconnected from the rest of the show in my opinion. At least it feels like it. It feels like tonal whiplash. One episode, Wander does something wrong - it's fine/haha funny. Other episode, Wander is W R O N G and needs to learn his lesson, also everything is extremely more on the nose. Try watching "The Fremergency Fronfract" right after "The Helper". Throughout 8 years I saw several people that had an opinion that these episodes felt really out of character for Wander, and I can understand where they are coming from. In my opinion, it's not Wander as a character, it's the lens through which we see him. Swapping from uncritical acceptance to critique feels unnatural to me.

Thinking of alternative scenarios/fanfiction makes me like Wander so much more. I think I can actually appreciate the guy so much more now. Everything I wrote was prompted by RWBY (+rewritten), because main team has the same problems Wander has times 1000.

I do hope that in season 3 they planned to explore Wander more (I remember seeing some tweets about it being the case), but I think that there is no way to adress this in season 3 without making it disconnect in many ways in some way from season 1 and 2.

Peeps + Syl by peanutcat62

Edgeworth is very ill y’all

oughh

Noor Harazeen you are the world's hero. You're completely correct, this is not normal. This is evil and no human needs to make these decisions.

for people who don’t know what’s happening in congo, here is a good thread explaining the abuse people of congo are experiencing daily.

https://x.com/nightowlnikk/status/1802830952940380545?s=46

if you care about palestine’s genocide, i believe you should care about congo’s genocide too.

since the thread is gone i’d recommend reading this instead: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/apr/11/rwanda-militias-drc-goma

the Guardian

Rwanda-backed militias are besieging a city of millions in DRC. Disaster will follow if the west stands by | Vava Tampa

Kagame’s regime is funding rape, killings and torture by the M23 militia, who have now cut off the city of Goma. But he can be stopped

thank you msilverstar!

this as well: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/21/a-guide-to-the-decades-long-conflict-in-dr-congo

Al Jazeera

A guide to the decades-long conflict in DR Congo

The resource-rich country, now facing a major rebel attack, has been racked by conflict for more than 30 years.

hey wait we need to talk about this conversation more