Feeling Safe

Auberon Muircetach and the Unicorn

The inspiration comes from "The Lady of the Lake". 1.‘I’ve heard,’ she did not give up. ‘that elves and unicorns love one another.’ 2.The unicorn guiding them was a bluish grey colour. 3.They made it theirs when they conquered it. When they opened the Ard Gaeth. With our help, because we had been used and abused and now they are trying to use and abuse you.

Art by Maciej Sidorowicz

I felt like painting something with owls and cats again and suddenly this idea popped up in my head.

OKAY so what ive been thinking about for ages is ctommy and being soft vs quiet . because i feel like it's one of those things in his fandom characterisation that sparks the most debate and in my opinion theres a huge difference between the two but i keep seeing people mix them together.

ctommy is soft but he's not quiet, and to disregard either of those things is what makes him less believable in fanworks imo

because on one hand, of course he's not quiet, that's the most obvious and i think one of the most commonly accepted qualms that we have with general fan interpretations of him. he doesn't just lie down and take shit, he's always committed to being an annoying shit, he's straight up rude so often, and even just. vocally. man's loud as fuck. i think that's pretty easy to establish .

but then what i find is that sometimes we veer into the other opposite, by completely denying that ctommy is also very soft sometimes. and by this i don't mean he turns into strawberry shortcake or starts being polite or whatever, but it's the fact that he's not just crass and rude. he's very considerate a lot of the time, he just shows it. uh. in his Own Way let's say. he cares for animals so so much, he's always so apologetic when he thinks he's hurt one of them, for fuck's sake he sung to the FLOWERS. he's very soft with nature, with things he's attached to, with things he perceives as weaker than him and needing protection.

the complexity of ctommy and what makes him so hard to grasp is that he's loud, he's brash, he is NOT a perfect quiet victim who suffers in silence, he asks for help, he's rude, he steals stuff, he's annoying as shit; but he's also soft, and incredibly empathetic, and he has no shame in showing that softness for animals or nature or his friends.

ctommy, and this is very much because cctommy himself acts like that a lot, is constantly vacillating between someone with the maturity of a thirteen year old boy who shouts and swears and pretends not to give a shit, and a boy who will stop everything he's doing to look at the sky or a flower or an animal (which does contrast his stereotypical rude teenager persona, because lots of aforementioned thirteen year old boys Would be embarrassed or whatever to do that).

he does BOTH. he's not just quiet and nice and sad and lonely; but he's not just rude and loud and """uncaring""" (if there is one thing ctommy is not i think we can all agree its UNCARING).

and i think this is why a lot of debates around "woobifying" ctommy (who remembers the july 2021 trenches . the butterfly clips.) tend to point any ctommy design that portrays him as soft, cozy, or even leaning into his feminine side as the be-all end-all of reducing his character.

in reality i think that misses the mark a bit because while there IS something to be said for sure about people turning ctommy into Blonde Anime Child #249824 and stripping him of his Very Vibrant character, i don't think that putting him in butterfly clips and skirts erases him in the same way. i think he could very much lean into that kind of thing . as long as he's still flipping off the camera we're all good

TLDR : fans strip ctommy of his loud-and-annoying persona but in avoiding that some forget that he's a character who's not afraid to be soft

By Mystical Antiquity

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

Ummmmmm…. What?!?!! Omg!… I was rewatching Bad’s visit to Dream in the prison and what do I find but a conversation about living conditions and torture with Quackity! Wtf?!!

It’s too long of a clips, so here’s the time stamp 33:34-36:06.

And I did my best to transcribe it (but dang it’s hard when they talk over each other):

B: “I’ll talk to Quack—oh Quackity he’s studying to be a lawyer! We can get Quackity’s opinion.”

Q: ”Hi Bad.”

B: “Hi. Umm question for you. So you—you know Deam right?”

Q: ”Yeah…”

B: ”Yeah you know how he’s like in jail right now.”

Q: “Mm—hmm”

B: “Do you think it’d be too much to ask to go around and like try to improve like his living conditions in the prison? Like what do you think?”

Q: “Improve his living conditions?…”

B: “Yeah like I went and visited—have you visited him in the prison yet?”

Q: “Yeah yeah. no I—I haven’t—I have no reason to visit him right now… Oh, let me get this straight: improve his living conditions as in maybe like add a wall around him uhh probably bully him for awhile you know—”

B: “Na—noo!”

Q: “You know kind of like how he did with L’manberg?”

B: “Nooo!—that’s the opposite.”

Q: “Because that’s exactly what he did with L’manberg. You know what? You know what? You’re right—”

B: ”Oh my gosh…”

Q: “I could improve his living conditions—”

B: “Quackity—no!”

Q: “By boxing him in a goddamn box!”

B: “Language! Woah woah—woah.”

Q: “Yea I—I probably could do that.”

B: “Language. language. language.”

Q: “Sorry…”

B: “That’s all right.”

Q: “Maybe I could improve his living conditions like that. Maybe I could do that—”

B: “No no no-No no no.”

Q: “Maybe you’re right.”

B: “Listen, you gotta go visit him. Okay? You know what? I’m not even gonna say it I’m just saying you gotta go and visit him on one of your streams. Okay? Because—”

Q: “Oh I am. No no no believe me—believe me I’m going to.”

B: “At some point go visit him cuz—”

Q: “Oh I’m going to.”

B: “And you’ll see exactly what I’m saying then we can like discuss it. Okay?”

Q: “What—what is this? Did he—did he manipulate you? What—what did he tell you?—”

B: “No!”

Q: “Why are you acting all of the sudden so nice to him?”

B: “Look obviously Dream deserves to stay there cuz he did a lot of bad things, right?”

Q: “Mm—hmm.”

B: “But—doesn’t mean we should like—keep him in there and just have him like tortured all the time like even—”

Q: “No no, not right—not right—”

B: “No, that is right!”

Q: “No, I think that’s exactly what he deserves.”

B: ”Oh come on—”

Q: ”No no I think that’s exactly what he deserves.”

B: “Even Dream has rights as a prisoner. Right? You’re a lawyer.”

Q: “I’m sorry I’m sorry but I don’t recall Dream having any mercy on us when—”

B: “Well, yeah he didn’t but—”

Q: “He put that wall around us—”

B: “Okay..”

Q: “And he pulled all those things to Tubbo and—”

B: “Okay…”

Q: “W—why do you want to release him?”

B: “No one’s talking about releasing him!”

Q: “Okay.”

B: “I’m talking about giving him like a potted plant! Just don’t torture him while he’s locked up—he’s been locked up enough…You feel me?”

Q: “No, Bad—”

B: “Like he’s been—he’s suffering.”

They’re platonic soulmates your honor.

Also the author really know how to break ClingyDuo enjoyers ueueue

[spoiler]

“So if you’re going to blow something or kill someone- just fucking kill me and get it over with.”

“I will never stop trying to get you back. I love you Tommy and I’ll never let that go.“

Fic: Rewind by @a-non-ymouswriter​

Ready, ten paces, fire.

Harpy by Maria Panfilova