Pride Month

You fail me...

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doodledee doo

Do you think Mabel gets too much hate? I noticed when a female character acts selfish she gets hated on but when a male character does the same it’s praised

We’re free to love or hate any character with or without reason. That said, I feel sad seeing Mabel hate and agree Mabel receives too much hate. I feel like the rhetoric claiming she’s unforgivably selfish is skewed. I think people have decent criticisms regarding Mabel’s character and how she’s presented. However, I don’t think they sufficiently describe the full picture.

Anecdotally, I don’t think this is a case of sweeping sexism because Ford also receives more criticism than I think warranted. My perspective on how much hate each character proportionately receives could be incomplete, though.

But anyway. Let’s talk Mabel.

First though: please don’t try to debate this with me. If you don’t like my opinion, no worries. That’s chill. I’m just not interested in using my recreation time debating this. Thanks! :) However, if you want further clarifications, analyses, case studies, etc. I’m happy to talk more, because this is NOWHERE close to exhausting my thoughts on this topic.

Mabel’s Selfishness: The General Critique

I think everyday anti-Mabel criticism tends to use points like:

When other characters act selfishly, they’re called out and the narrative punishes them. But when Mabel wants something, she gets it, and it’s a reward (The Deep End, The Time Traveler’s Pig, Escape from Reality).

Mabel never learns how to give up something important and deal with that loss. Even when she lets something go, it’s not something that would have been good in her life. For instance, her failed puppet performance is “dodging a bullet” rather than losing something meaningful, since Gabe’s just a puppet kisser. In the end, she doesn’t have to live with sacrifice (Boyz Crazy, Sock Opera).

Mabel even selfishly causes the apocalypse by giving Bill the rift. She’s never held responsible for that (Dipper and Mabel vs the Future).

The narrative reinforces that Mabel is a good person even when she’s not (The Last Mabelcorn).

People particularly look at Mabel in S2 over S1; many claim that’s when her character began to feel selfish and insufferable. 

This isn’t everything, but I have tried to characterize the rhetoric fairly based upon what I’ve seen.

I find these discussion points understandable. Mabel can be self-focused and sometimes ignores others’ feelings. Alex Hirsch admitted in DVD commentaries that he focused on Dipper learning lessons because he put himself in Dipper’s shoes. And some of Alex’s writing intentions could’ve been clearer, like instances where the twins resolve conflicting desires. We could talk about how the show could be improved or the character is legitimately not-selfless.

At the same time, I think how fandom uses these talking points isn’t 100% fair to Mabel’s character or the show’s full narrative. 

I want to point out that Mabel hate for her selfishness covers two fronts: one claim that Mabel is selfish, and another claim that the surrounding plot doesn’t handle her selfishness satisfactorily. I think there’s fair constructive criticism when it comes to narrative framing (even if I disagree), but I don’t think the same dialogue is good rationale against Mabel’s personality. At times I see the two concepts conflated. The narrative may annoy you if you think selfishness isn’t addressed in plot, and contribute to you disliking the character, but claiming “Mabel is selfish” because of that is flawed logic. 

In this analysis, I’ll cover both fronts. I’ll tackle the four points I mentioned above and explain why I find them too harsh. I’m not going to cover all my thoughts (yes, my original draft was longer!!), but I will argue:

Mabel reverses her selfishness - and that’s the big choice sealing the climax of multiple episodes. She doesn’t get off “consequence free” either (Boyz Crazy, Sock Opera)

Mabel sacrifices for others. The narrative does show that Dipper and Mabel meet in the middle, not that Dipper feels guilty enough to ameliorate his sister’s wishes (Sock Opera, Escape from Reality)

Mabel giving the rift to “Blendin” mirrors Dipper offering a puppet to Bill. Both twins are emotionally compromised and believe they’re making a harmless deal with an inconsequential item. Neither would’ve made these choices in calmer circumstances. Sock Opera doesn’t have Dipper deal with his culpability; relax up on Mabel (Sock Opera, Dipper and Mabel vs the Future)

Mabel’s selfishness is addressed, handled, and resolved. The moral of The Last Mabelcorn isn’t defending Mabel’s goodness; it’s Mabel embracing imperfection. Mabel learns she’s a bad person and changes her perspective of herself multiple times in canon (The Last Mabelcorn, Lost Legends)

I could also have talked about how selfishness isn’t required to be resolved in her character arc, all the times Mabel does nice things for others, how she doesn’t always obnoxiously hog the spotlight, and other things, but I want to cap the length of this essay.

So let’s begin.

Can Mabel learn from selfishness if she’s consequence-free and never handles meaningful loss?

Anti-Mabel Argument: Circumstances don’t adversely affect Mabel. This means she never has to sacrifice for her brother like Dipper does for her. For instance, in Sock Opera, Mabel sees that Gabe is a weirdo over-obsessed with puppets. Her failed puppet performance was “dodging a bullet” rather than losing something meaningful, so she doesn’t learn true self-sacrificial love. Mabel never learns how to give something important up and deal without it. So, she never changes.

Czytaj dalej

Siblings reunion

Glamrock Circus Baby is a thing and she operates in the ice cream parlor at Bonnie Bowl. If you wanna do the GlamMike headcanon, with Elizabeth still possessing Baby, just A LOT calmer now, then that would be an epic, and also very worrying, rivalry.

Prompt from Hydrangea_Cherry9 on ao3! This is pre Security Breach, if SB even happens in this AU. 

Sibling Rivalries Never Die

Glamrock Bella Bunny, the rebranded and redesigned Circus Baby, wasn’t a terrible host for Elizabeth Afton. At least she wasn’t stuck in a mechanical clown anymore, though she hadn’t quite decided if the red and pastel pink bunny—because heaven forbid the pizzaplex have a human-ish animatronic—was actually better. 

(It did soothe something in her tormented, tattered soul that this animatronic didn’t have any mechanism for snatching innocent kids. She had maybe been in a better mood since she didn’t have to live with being stuck in her murderer’s body.) 

The best part of her new twisted existence was the company. And she didn’t mean Bonnie, who Bella saw and interacted with most often. No, there was nothing like a bit of schadenfreude to lift one’s spirit (pun intended). 

She threw a handful of plastic spoons at Glamrock Freddy, the current host for her older brother. It was a slow day, and there was no one at the counter to catch her misbehaving.

“Seriously?” he said, more annoyed than any child would ever hear the great Freddy Fazbear be. “Real mature, Li—Bella.” 

“Get lost, Freddy. Or can you not read?” She pointed over at the hand drawn sign that Monty had been happy to make for her. A great big red X slashed over a sloppy crayon depiction of Freddy’s face, with BANNED written above it.

“Oh, for the love of—I’m here to see Bonnie. Not you. It’s not my fault you’re stuck in the bowling alley.” 

“I prefer ‘defending my territory,’” Elizabeth said with a haughty sniff. “And if free roaming makes you so high and mighty, then you can go wander around elsewhere and wait for your boyfriend to join you.”

Michael sputtered. “We aren’t—Bonnie’s not my boyfriend!” 

“Mhm, sure.” She roughly scooped a generous ball of strawberry and unceremoniously lobbed it at his chest. “Oops. Guess you’ve gotta go get cleaned up.” 

“You’re such a brat,” he snapped, snatching up a handful of napkins to try and mop up the mess of pink ice cream splatter. “You can’t still be mad about last week.” 

Bella wasn’t an animatronic particularly suited to hissing and gnashing her teeth, but Elizabeth was nothing if not furious and determined. “If it wouldn’t get me decommissioned, I’d jump over the counter right now and rip your arms off, you pathetic excuse for a—”

“What’d he do?” a child’s voice interrupted. 

Circuits sparking in surprise, they both jumped. Michael stumbled to the side, revealing a boy who had been standing behind him. It was hard for an animatronic to be shocked into shutdown, but seeing the absolute spitting image of their dead younger brother staring back at them with a mischievous sort of fascination did the job. 

Michael choked out a yelp before his eyes went dark, and Freddy unceremoniously toppled over to the tiled floor. Elizabeth—and she would gloat about this later—lasted a moment longer, her mouth flapping with her speechlessness before her core overheated and forced a reboot. 

In the final moment before her vision cut out, she would have sworn she saw a copy of her brother beside and a bit above the boy, as if floating. And that second Evan, the see-through one, looked as surprised as Elizabeth felt. 

Twisted wonderland Villains with. Disney princesses.

Baby first words

Absolutely obsessed and self indulgent they have my whole heart and i don’t know why (i do i just wasn’t expecting it)

*holds them* i just think they’re so funny and weird. god reduced to weird dad and his new weird family

Run Shamura while you still can !

Chapter 4.5 Page 5

A child with blood on their hands

hey did you guys know its the pines twins’ 23rd birthday today? I had no idea.

anyway, here’s a thing I’ve been working on for a while. This was originally supposed to be for the show’s 10th anniversary back in June, but I definitely didn’t anticipate how long it’d take and had to push it back to the end of August. It feels like an appropriate way to send off the summer :]

ps: as per gf tradition, there’s a hidden message along the first 10 pages

stay weird etc etc

Belcher and Pines Sleepover, poor Louise :(