amari

Two, while not explicitly in a "teacher" role as with Four, still obviously stands above their contestants when it comes to their power. I mean, the "power imbalance" between themself and the objects is about as explicit as it gets, with their yoylelite power surpassing Four's. All this must be understood in relation to this power imbalance, and whether or not Two themself wants this kind of dynamic to exist, it exists.

From their introduction in Episode 16 of BFB, Two shows a very myopic view of their own capacity for harm. Outwardly, their power is all fun and games! And, sure, it is at first: they build a whole hotel out of bathrooms and thin air, similar to how they built a cute little house on their home planet. But we immediately see the capacity Two has, using this power, to harm the objects, without any responsibility being taken afterwards. After they explain their deal, we cut to a scene of Two enticing the objects with their lava manipulation, hoping to woo them onto their side of the split competition. They say "oops" facetiously, throw some of their lava display into Bottle, and she giggles before going silent and then screaming in agony before shattering. It's explicitly an ironic joke about Bottle's full trust in Two being "completely safe," but it immediately tells us what Two is capable of doing to the objects at any moment. Even though this power can cause harm, its use is being propelled entirely by Two's desire to impress their audience, and it is this inattentive and self-centred viewpoint will inform many of their actions towards the contestants throughout the season, especially when we know, of course, that with great power comes great responsibility.

Speaking of responsibility, though, there is a contradiction: Two uses their power flippantly, mostly to show off or do something fun, but there is also something in them that does understand the power's capacity for harm. That responsibility that they know they need to have with a power like theirs--and that they know they do not have--explains why Two starts their own contest: they want to offload the responsibility of the yoylelite power onto someone else. They recognize they aren't responsible with it. And that's a good thing to recognize, sure, but...well, we have yet to see why they are taking an episodic game show to do this, using it willy nilly while it progresses. As they continue to use their power throughout TPOT, it's clear that Two isn't quite as intent on letting it go as they might want to be.

Two's split relationship with their power, both wanting to get rid of it but also loving how it serves them, knowing it requires responsibility to use but also not feeling they can fulfill that responsibility, reveals that they have a difficult time doing things for the greater good, particularly when it's inconvenient to themself. Even when they know something isn't right, they don't always have the moral integrity to follow their senses. As I've said before, they are a very self-centred character, telling the objects yelling at their sudden appearance, "Hush now! I'M talking!" This sort of behaviour continues throughout the series, too, and only really shows a turning point after Gaty disappears, but even then there's little to go off of as of TPOT 23. They certainly aren't always self-confident, and some of it teeters close to revealing it's all an act, but there is still so much effort Two is putting into being a cool and responsible and awesome host that they ignore the actual responsibility forced on them way back when the yoylelite power was given to them.

Two is a complex character, but I'm limiting how much I want to talk about them on their own because I want to focus more on one of their closest relationships: Gaty.

Most people see Gaty and Two's relationship in a positive light, and this is for a fair reason: they almost immediately hit it off with an earnest conversation about what it is like to decide for yourself what you want to be, and it is instigated by Gaty ditching her team to talk to Two. They both recognize part of themself in the other, and so enjoy each other's company. Also giving us the show's first explicitly transgender character in Gaty, it's of course immediately resonant with a lot of people in the show's very queer audience. Surely this hits off a very strong and healthy relationship for these characters, right? God, I wish. Really, I do.

Except that Gaty begins their conversation with a passing comment about the time limit, and when we return to their conversation, it's Two airing out their frustrations about the expectations placed on them. Again, this is rather innocuous, at first. Gaty is very understanding and wants to help out Two, which she does by sharing her own thoughts about being transgender! However, increasingly in these conversations, Two continues to centre these conversations around their own problems. It is never really about Gaty as much as it's about Two, and Gaty only shares her own stories to Two in relation to their problems, assuming they will give them more perspective on how to deal with them. In other words, the relationship they build with Two isn't really reciprocal in a way that friendships usually are, where friends are there for each other in more-or-less equal capacity, giving each other a shoulder to lean on or whipping each other back into shape when they're being stupid. Instead, what we see from the get-go is Gaty carrying all of Two's insecurities and worries, spending less time with her fellow contestants and objects and more time, in many ways, expending emotional energy on keeping Two in check. In fact, it's probably thanks to Gaty that we don't see Two spiral sooner, given that it's her absence that turns them into a pile of spaghetti in their bed.

Two's preoccupation with their own emotional problems isn't unique to Gaty, it's universal in all of their interactions with the objects. Take Two keeping Clock around after his elimination in TPOT 7. In TPOT 8, Winner is upset at Two for keeping Clock around, literally responding to Two's request to talk with a frustrated, "You didn't ask me." Two seems confused. Their immediate deflection of "I didn't think-" is interrupted by an "I know" from Winner, showing both an impatient cutoff of whatever excuse they were going to use but also creating a full sentence on its own. Two doesn't think. They don't think far into their actions. They do not consider how others feel about their actions insofar as they believe their actions to be justified. They are trying to force a relationship fix without even considering the other half, and of course with all of this obvious to Winner, Winner wants absolutely nothing to do with Two.

But then we get back to Gaty and Two, and Two is not really taking Winner's words to heart. Instead, they push their emotional baggage from this interaction onto Gaty and indeed defend their actions and reject the idea of giving certain contestants special treatment (ironic). They insist, while talking to their special contestant, that they "didn't see it that way!" and in doing this kind of venting expect Gaty to agree fully with their frustration. Gaty knows this. She can see Two is approaching the Winner situation the wrong way, but she also knows what Two is expecting from this "conversation" with her: first and foremost an I know, I understand you, I get that. Using her own experience with Book to drive her point home for Two, Gaty provides gentle advice after the comfort, trying to tell Two that they shouldn't rush the repair of their relationship. This is the same as the conversation in TPOT 2, and it will appear in conversations later.

Episode 9 brings Outbreak at Stake. When she hears Two yell in the midst of the outbreak, Gaty immediately springs into action to help them. At this point in the show, she knows a lot about Two and cares about them. She feels she has a genuine relationship with them, yes, and in many respects she does, but there is also an underlying assumption given all their past interactions that she will continue to help them when they are in trouble, even in a situation as unprecedented as a zombie outbreak. It can be difficult in real life to separate the feeling of obligation from the feeling of care for another person, and it's what makes Gaty and Two's relationship so complicated. Given all their prior interactions--largely her hearing out Two's problem-of-the-day on their couch--she correlates this relationship with duty. Keep in mind through all of this that Two is the one hosting her in their hotel, hosting her as a contestant in their show, and remains the one with a very literal sense of power over her that they can use at any point.

It's always been weird if you've known where to look, but this episode is where Two and Gaty's relationship becomes explicitly weirder. Because it's weird. It's weird. They both see the relationship as genuinely strong, and yet they are ultimately not on equal footing in this relationship. Two has literal, explicit power over Gaty, and Gaty listens to Two kvetch about their life like a therapist.

But this scene. This scene is why it's weird. There is explicit creepiness in the scene with Gaty and Two. On the one hand, of course it's creepy, because it's the zombified Two luring her into their room, and we can chalk up their pleas to be nothing more than zombified moans. But we can also interpret this as Two operating off instinct, revealing a deep, strong fixation on Gaty, not just calling for her but trying to get her alone with them in a room, away from the other contestants and zombies. This is ostensibly done to teleport her to the elimination space, away from the zombies and therefore away from danger, but this isn't necessarily assured. Plus, we know that Two could have just spontaneously teleported next to Gaty to whisk her away, as they did with Golf Ball and Tennis Ball later on. So why didn't they? Why did they do something objectively creepy, disappearing her while she's completely out of sight of everyone else? Gaty knows Two is already zombified --there is nothing she can really do right now to "help" them--and yet she believes in Two's benevolence enough to follow them into a room alone with them. They could have done anything to her, and in fact she acknowledges this at the episodes conclusion, admitting, "Two could've killed us but...they didn't. It's just nice to hold onto that." From the setting, the music, the insistence, and the uncertainty with which Gaty says this last line, it's supposed to be creepy and confusing. I think, even though this does lead to Gaty surviving the challenge, we are supposed to be left questioning Gaty's relationship with Two, or more accurately the kind of power Two holds over Gaty's head. This creepiness places a bigger question mark over how we are supposed to feel about their relationship at large, to make us reflect on the peculiarity of Two, the person leading a competition, giving "special" treatment to Gaty and nobody else. The fact that we don't confidently know how much of Two is really present in their demands here, nor know exactly what a zombified Two is going to do with Gaty alone and isolated from her peers, illustrates as much.

Even when Gaty starts her conversation with Two in TPOT 12 to gather intel for her team, Two immediately gets right into venting about their hosting challenges, not letting Gaty get a word in. By this point she expects this, so she's not surprised, and she wants said intel, so she just watches and maybe listens/maybe dissociates as they let off their steam. We cut to the conversation again a while later, and they're still talking. Pin snaps them out of this "conversation" and Gaty gets right to it. But this just drives home the point that their relationship isn't equal. Not that Two is doing this on purpose, of course. They aren't. They're just very self-centred, as we've seen, ignoring what Winner thinks, not asking Gaty anything about her own life, assuming things about the contestants that aren't true (see TPOT 22, where they assume objects like isolation and enclosed spaces rather than asking them what they would like? This is very funny as a joke, but it also works as a neon sign detailing Two's fatal flaw) and thinking about their own problems before anything else.

When Gaty is eliminated, Two gives her "preferential" treatment. They do this with Clock earlier in the season, letting him stick around to patch things up with Winner, but this is only after Clock begs to stay. Like Clock, Gaty is sent to the kitchen, but Gaty is a lot more accepting of her elimination and allows Two to whisk her away without another word, probably expecting the elimination space that she knows about from TPOT 9. Instead, she opens her eyes to Four and X in the kitchen, who immediately offload their leftovers onto her and, as we later see, make her do chores around the kitchen. When Two checks in on her sitting (still injured, by the way) on a pile of scraps, she's happy to see them, and they immediately tell her, "cool new gig I got you, huh?" It's important, here, that this is a confirmatory statement rather than a genuine question on whether she likes it or not; Gaty replies that "it's certainly interesting" -- not exactly a ringing endorsement, huh? That's the type of thing you say to someone when you don't want to outright say something sucks shit. Well, obviously: it literally isn't a cool gig, it's just her doing more chores for more numbers. But like we know by now, Gaty feels an obligation to help Two, and if Two is excited to give her a special "gig" like kitchen duty, she's going to do it even if it isn't what she wants.

Episode 15 is where we get a clearer hint at Gaty's feelings about this "gig" situation, subtle though it might be. Two has to leave for Cake at Stake, and Gaty assures them that she can handle the rest of the work. After they leave, her expression sours into this one:

The reason I used this picture at the top is because it's the last thing we really see of Gaty in the world before she is whisked away into One's dimension and then erased entirely. It makes me ill, seeing her still damaged and still working for Four and X, smiling at Two but then returning to a state of discontent. This could be sadness only about Cake and Stake and the competition continuing without her, but I don't know, it's been a little while since she's been working in the kitchen, and I think this expression is way more pertinent to the fatigue, perhaps even a little resentment, that she feels for the labour she's forced to be doing. Think about it: none of the other eliminated contestants are doing chores. They're trapped in the eliminated area, I guess, but it isn't like they have any responsibilities there. Gaty is trapped too, just in the kitchen this time with Four and X breathing down her throat, and she has the added weight of dish duty. Gaty isn't even being kept around for her own sake. She never had a say in this, and still doesn't have a say in this. She's only being forced into this position so Two can see her while they step away for their lunch break or whatever.

Two is not doing this--any of this, from the venting to the gig--to purposefully back Gaty in a corner. Absolutely not. There is no malice in what they are doing, and I think they genuinely believe that a) their conversations are reciprocally meaningful and b) they are doing Gaty a favour by sneaking her away into the kitchen. But this is exactly the problem: these types of relationships can so easily become a "frog-in-boiling-pot" type of situation when, and especially when, the person in the position of power is completely ignorant of what they're doing. What begins as an earnest attempt to connect with someone else continues as a growing relationship until one of you is running their game show and the other is doing dishes endlessly without a way to escape from that responsibility being offloaded onto you.They are not equals in this relationship, and Two has over the years offloaded so much of their emotional responsibility onto Gaty that I don't see them ever making up should Gaty come back, step back, and realize this about their relationship. It shouldn't be up to her, but I have a feeling it will be, if Two continues to be Two.

I could go even further, talking about the gender dynamics of a woman being forced into a kitchen to do labour without anything in return. But the point is that Two and Gaty's relationship is exploitative without either of them fully being aware of this dynamic, least of all Two. Two should know better. With the position of power that they're in, they should know better. But the honest reality is that they don't, just as many real people do not know better when they get into relationships with subordinates. just as they aren't responsible with their power, just as they aren't responsibly taking care of any of the objects, leaving Pie to rot alone for months and trapping them in a place they don't know, separated and isolated from the friends that they've known and loved for years before they ever knew Two.

To be absolutely clear, this is not a criticism against TPOT itself, nor is this a critique against the way Two is written. Two is written brilliantly. This is a critique commending TPOT for its characterization of Two. But in this same vein, I wish people would stop treating Two like a poor innocent baby when they are a very flawed character whose flaws and errors shouldn't be excused just because they weren't paying attention. They weren't responsible with their power when they had it, and sure they knew they weren't going to be responsible with it, but awareness does not excuse irresponsibility. Nor should we ignore the more unfavourable parts of Two's relationship with Gaty; they are very much there if you know what the beginnings of an exploitative relationship look like. I can't wait to see what happens to them, because I want to see the fallout of their mistreatment not just of Gaty but of all the objects. It's coming, I'm sure!