oh shit

i know back then no one knew and nowadays there aren’t all that many people writing l'manberg era fic. but it is canon that cwilbur was largely absent during the entirety of the l'manberg era. that the guy was lying in his bed crying. I know it’s only a one line mention from ghostbur but it large scale re-contextualizes an almost two month period, and the implications for his character are Enormous.

cwilbur is always a little uncomfortable. it’s not in his nature, comfort, and he is too neurotic for that. he is stressed out, he is irresponsible and at the same time feels responsible for everything, and he knows both. Not the guy who is able to lay back into the grass. I mean he Could but he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

cwilbur’s not a prime but definitely an example of diplomacy. he’s definitely a prime example of instability. what i mean to say is that he’s an incredibly dynamic character who often compromises, and then dedicates his entire identity to that compromise. l’manberg was that compromise between usurping cdream and keep following his rules. it’s like he’s falling in love, quick and hard and often, but instead of a person it’s usually an ideal/ various parts of an ideal.

he’s a vulgar bitch. just as bad than ctommy. ‘cunt-sayer’ you need to throw in at least one word per chapter/one shot that your average reader doesn’t know though. eloquence. it’s the balance between one word the reader has never heard before and one word the reader would rather expect to hear from ctommy or cquackity.

this is one of my favourites, if a less prominent trait, cwilbur does have a tendency to project onto other people. think of ‘you’re never gonna be president, tommy’ which was a hurtful thing to say, but came seemingly out of nowhere. for ctommy. cwilbur on the other hand already struggled with his right and fittedness to presidency at the time. or think him throwing them both into the pot of ‘bad influence to the server’ during his time with ctommy in limbo. or even more recently ‘you just don’t want anyone to know that you failed to protect the one person who still cares about you.’ from ho16.

talking about ho16, I haven’t read a lot of tntduo fic to make a lot of statements about this. but cwilbur’s relationship with cquackity and las nevadas carries both the well. attraction that is there between the characters but also resentment (he took my city), jealousy (why does he get to keep a city/power at it’s most simplest) and disgust (he’s doing it wrong, that bitch has no soul). ho16 drove that point home so very precisely. the vice guillotine and his poem are sat the steering wheel.

when he’s not currently in a high stress situation or having a mental breakdown he’s quite non confrontational with most other characters. with the notable exception of cquackity, there’s also his relationship with cranboo which in the beginning is characterized by his extreme distaste for cranboo’s ideology. because god help me they are such perfect foils. cranboo believes in a People not Sides, where cwilbur, at least in his mind, puts Sides before people, and values loyalty over anything else. cwilbur wanting his family and friends on exactly the same side as him is a vital part of his character. actually one that that had been established even before the final control room (and was made worse by), most clearly in his conversation with c!tommy about ctommy’s main residence being outside of L’manberg where he goes as far as to threaten to exclude c!tommy from the project if he doesn’t dedicate his entire being to the nation. or his speech to cniki about how she shouldn’t be loyal to him but to l’manberg. or his treatment of cfundy when he decides to go against him during the elections. or him backhandedly mentioning that he doesn’t consider cphil part of his inner circle despite being blood family because of their different political opinions.

another post recently brought up that he, cwilbur likely tried to put on a ‘competent’ front for ctommy and ctubbo even during pogtopia (for them in particular, that he was putting on a front ever since l’manberg has long since been confirmed by ghostbur) because of the way he acted during the events of cniki’s birthday party (a hot mess, the most depressed man i have ever seen in my life god bless). fun fact cniki’s birthday party was actually the only time cwilbur appeared in season one that had ctommy or ctubbo (or cfundy) being absent entirely. for the notes: acts very differently around just a group of adults who are not asking anything of nor paying much attention to him, than around the kids who look up to him as their leader.

if you write cwilbur. make him lie his ass off. either because he doesn’t want to be judged. actually most often because he doesn’t want to be judged. or because he has complicated feelings about something. he does it often enough in canon.

cwilbur is a caring person, he cares but he is also not the most considerate person, often because of his own mental health issues surely, but i cannot understate how much of a dick his character often is. it’s less that he’s traditionally mean rather than unnecessarily harsh or being too caught up in his own ideas of things.

this one’s actually just as much a look at how cwilbur is written but i swear 90% of his character is making irresponsible/ poorly thought out choices and then having to deal with the unexpected terrible fallout. cwilbur’s the type guy who’s always having atleast one moral/ideological dilemma, or atleast avoiding one. or to say it in ccwilbur’s words, you can very much compartmentalize him into the guy in the back occasionally blipping ideas to the pseudo confident anxious guy in the front.

If we take cwilbur’s laments on the cycle of violence while he’s in pogtopia, where he talks about the bloodshed that comes of revolution at face value then aside from his non-existent mental health at the time, he’s more or less an extremist pacifist. when I say this I actually mean that he already was an extremist pacifist before and only got worse. you don’t understand, that guy refused to wear armour in the middle of a war. and acted as a fucking Armourless Living Meat shield for the rest of l’manberg.