#billy smigglebug

General Powers / History HCs

(I mention canon in this but I do consider canon to be nebulous, so just consider it the building blocks of my arguments so nothing sounds like it’s coming out of nowhere <3)

I actually think that the TT isn’t actually from that far into the future from where Billy is now— I think he’s more accurately from the recent past. This is largely because of a few reasons, not least of which being that the Toilet Toucher is also Ghost’s uncle Ernie, meaning Ghost had to either see pictures of or meet him in the past. This is further backed up by the TT saying that Johnny Roast was his favorite member of PIE— a member of PIE in its early days, and one who had long since been uninvolved since the TT suddenly arrived on the scene. In fact, by the time the TT first appeared, there’s a chance that Roast had been perma-dead for years, depending on how you interpret canon. I think he found a way to travel through time using a similar power to the one he uses to travel through space (cough, touching the toilets… also possibly butts? Yeah I dunno how canon that second one is.) and I think both are just further expansions of powers Billy already has. We possibly see Billy use this power at the end of the ~Sally’s First Day Of High School~ video or whatever it’s called…

Basically, Billy is working for Darth Calculus, who tells him to wipe Sally’s memory and have the pair of them move into the Acachalla family to study their behavior so DC could figure out how actual families are supposed to work or something, an event that happens entirely off-screen but from what we can hear, something goes wrong and Billy is the one who’s memory is erased. However, while I know for a fact that the memory-wiping thing is a device, the pair are also immediately teleported away. This may have been through a portal, but I can’t remember if they state the method of transportation, so there’s a chance however Billy and Sally left that place was through the same method as the TT’s time and space travel… things. This actually isn’t the first time we hear DC being directly associated with portals, but now that I think about it, it is only really for a period of time around when Billy might’ve been working for him, so maybe the TT can do long-distance space travel with portals?

There was a time where I thought the TT came from the Billion-Year-War timeline, up until he started appearing in videos after the war was prevented, largely because Billy is completely gone and unmentioned after the war starts, despite being present when it first begins. He shows up at the end of the finale, meaning he was on the island with Sally, Papa, and (Action) Charlie (the Last Hope for Humanity During the Billion Year War Who Will Save Us All from Ourselves… Keller (<- HC surname)) when it all started. Because no one was coming back at all during the BYW, that does imply that Billy is straight-up gone in this universe, and the lack of TT, who can also do respawns, does imply that he either disappeared in a way that prevented the TT from coming back, or the TT just bailed… or was captured…? I do think traveling through large periods of time and space can affect his memory really badly and make him forget things, including his own identity and powers, but I also think that he hasn’t done any major space/time traveling since remembering who he is, so he’d be recovering his memories over time.

While I like the idea that the TT was a result of BYW, I don’t think it’s the best use of his character. It’s not antithetical to any kind of canon, since BYW Toast is still around after the war ends and that means time travel in VT doesn’t delete people in paradoxes, but I think we can do more with it. The Toilet Toucher does not appear during the Billion Year War arc at all, he is not present even for flashbacks when we have people from the 13th dimension making cameos. If that really was the world-ending event that sent him back in time, we’re missing out by not having him present trying to stop the alien threat or reacting to it in some way. Whatever made him choose to leave the Acachallas, whether it was an accident, intentional, or some third unrelated option— I want it to be something that he can not only point out but react to. I think this can range from DC trying to get Billy back in a number of ways causing him to panic and run away (whether it be an attempted hostile takeover, the family being pursued and Billy realizing they’re only after him and deciding to leave so they’ll be safe, DC going directly to Papa claiming that Billy was only ever a spy for him— making papa feel betrayed and push Billy away, or a good old-fashioned trick— there’s a lot one can do with this.), to some kind of hostile invasion making him go back to try to fix things but going Too far back and forgetting what he was there to do (Prince Fang, perhaps?), or it legit just being an accident where he was just trying to replicate the powers he sees the TT use and screwed up. There’s a lot that could be done here.

… I think I have an idea as to how his powers work, and I hope it’s less complicated than I originally assumed it would be. From how I see it, the respawns and the space/time travel function on the same principles. Space and time are actually pretty similar to each other— as time is theorized to be the forth dimension, and space consists of the other three. It seems that Billy’s powers allow him to manipulate a person’s standing in these four dimensions… or specifically his own. I think that the way that TT is able to move through space is not the toilets themselves, but the plumbing, using the toilet as a door. Similarly, I think that bringing people back from the dead is just. Pulling someone away from a door. People have argued to think of wormholes as folding space and punching a hole through it, but who’s to say you can’t consider it like a door in a wall? In Billy’s case, the door is already there, he just needs to open it… and in the case of coming back from the dead, that might be him forcefully keeping the door open for everybody… or closed? Who knows in this case. Either way, Billy can more manipulate time than he can space, but I still consider it space/time manipulation. He just needs an ending to do it. It does make me question how much of a ghost he is, though. He might just be legit immortal—

Anyways, despite his… issues with the Acachallas (he is a ‘ghost’ that haunts them specifically but i can’t remember if he has any spite toward them), I don’t even think he needs to have some kind of actual problem with them. I don’t think he remembered he was Billy for awhile after meeting the family and Maddie, so there’s a chance he picked up resentment toward the Acachallas from the other ghosts in the area. It could also help to explain why he was less and less hostile toward them as time went on, he gained more memories and realized he didn’t hate them. This might also have to do with his time being Ernie Ghost, since I do think he parted with the OG PIE on bad terms (how else would the man have gotten locked in a solitary confinement pocket dimension?)— even if he doesn’t have any negative feelings toward the Acachallas, another family he was apart of betrayed or hurt him and it’s put him on edge while his memories are blurry.

I think he does have all the same powers that Billy has now, meaning he does have the ability to bring people back from the dead, he just frequently chooses not to use it because he’s kind of a cynical old man. Also he knows how to control his powers where Billy does not. Billy’s just here to have a good time and I love him for it.

Ok more normal things now.

General Headcanons

Friendships - Billy is incredibly extroverted and charismatic, making friends everywhere he goes and melting cold hearts… and I think that isn’t a trait he outgrew. TT doesn’t have any group that he specifically works with, but I also don’t think he has many enemies outside of ones he had a prior history with like PIE and the Acachallas. He’s mostly just drifting around for now, trying to get his bearings in the modern day, but he’ll accept company where he can find it and values friendship where he can find it. (He ran for president in a video once. Idk why he did that.) Because of his being labeled as a ghost, he has interacted with and befriended a good number of ghosts… not including Maxwell Acachalla. Even though neither of them can put their finger on it, both of them feel there’s something uncannily familiar about the other. He spends a lot of time just wandering around and seeing what he gets into next.

Health - He’s genuinely surprised when he realizes he’s still not a ghost of any kind, especially after having people who are supposed to know ghosts call him a ghost to his face. He doesn’t really have to take great care of himself because of his own powers, but he’s starting to go out of his way to take care of himself more because he’s realized that life is generally more enjoyable if you feel good while experiencing it. He wants to find himself and enjoy himself while he does it, whether that ends up being through committing mass crimes or finally settling down again. Yeah— respawns don’t make you immortal, they just make it harder to stay dead, and even with them it doesn’t make general pain, exhaustion, etc suddenly go away forever.

Lifestyle - It would take some convincing to get him to settle down. He was dubbed the Toilet Toucher while in prison soon after escaping borderline solitary confinement in a pocket dimension. I can’t imagine he’s someone who feels comfortable staying in one place for too long, and with the means to instantly travel into almost any building in the general area from a public bathroom, why would he ever need to get his own house, or even a car for that matter? He’s all but set. I think he’s trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, and will overtime gravitate toward helping people who are sick and hurt. Even though he did use to live at this time, he experiences culture shock every time he takes part in a conversation with a normal person… He has an easier time talking to ghosts. He’s trying to figure out where he was before he time-traveled himself into prison, considering he wears a lab jacket everywhere but has no recollection of what science he could have studied to earn him it. He’s considered traveling, but he doesn’t tend to stay in far-away places for too long because he gets homesick.

Memory - I think the TT is a recovering amnesiac from three separate (major) occasions. From most to least recent; I think he lost his memory some time before he first appeared in the videos, chronologically some time between when Ghost accidentally released him from his solitary confinement pocket dimension and when he first appeared in a prison with no memories from before then. It’s very likely that there’s lost time between these two spaces where he did another bit of time travel, but whether he was traveling forward or backward or what could’ve happened between when he was freed and when he returned.. I’m not sure. Before that, I think he lost his memories after traveling backward in time from the Acachallas, which is why he had his name changed to Ernie. Finally, I mentioned this earlier, but he lost his memories right before joining the Acachallas. It wasn’t as severe as the other two times, as he at least remembered his first name, but he didn’t care enough to think about it anyways. Which. Valid. As a result of this, a lot of his memories are blurred together and he has a bit of a hard time remembering who did what when and why, sometimes even making it difficult for him to remember whose side he’s on sometimes. Memories from before he was an Acachalla need to be drilled back into his head, while memories from when he was apart of Early PIE are the easiest for him to recall and tend to blur with older memories as a result. Being able to witness his time as an Acachalla is doing wonders at giving him back memories from this period of his life.

How I use TT in relation to other Characters

This is mostly going to be focusing on character relationships held by the TT, but also important relationships held by Ernie Ghost in the creation of the TT. I think that Billy’s relationships are wholly his own to consider, unless stated otherwise, and don’t need to add on to this. However, Ghost practically states that whoever he knew as his uncle (Ernie) was the TT, either he was in some middle ground where he was approaching that period of his life, or he started being the TT at the same time he was Ghost’s uncle so,,, even with the memory loss, it’s instrumental to consider imo.

- Cardboard Friend -

This is only one of many ideas I have for the origins of CBF, but the one most relevant to this would be that the creation of CBF was the first step into making Ernie Ghost into the TT. The way I see it, Billy has the power to bring inanimate things to life— whether that just be him bringing inanimate objects to life on his own or him being able to sense restless souls tied to inanimate objects and bring them out. I think he may be able to bring things to life with more awareness than the ones we’ve seen, but I think it depends on who/what they’re brought to life for.

~ Watermelon Friend was created by Billy when he was a child, and though it was manipulative and terrifying in the end, it did come off like an imaginary friend until the danger was realized. If memory serves, this is largely because no one could hear melon friend outside of Billy. It is also worth noting Melon Friend was likely related to DC in some way, but moving on…

~ Penguin Friend was made when Billy was older and in a house full of siblings and conflict (not in a bad way ofc), and Penguin Friend is very familiar to Maddie-Friend in that it was stringently loyal to Billy and could get somewhat aggressive with anything that got in the way of that. I think that Penguin Friend is the biggest example of this theory, its originals are the most unknown and its reactions are the most familiar.

~ Maddie Friend doesn’t count I’ll explain later.

Cardboard Friend would be another one of these made for Gregory to have as an imaginary friend at a time when he was distressed in some way while Ernie was meant to be babysitting him. Likely during a move between houses, thus the Cardboard… and maybe even the kidnapping. In creating CBF, Ernie put Gregory in danger and possibly got T.Casket killed. During this time, OG PIE is growing more and more untrusting of the paranormal, and a fault in the old systems of early PIE makes every paranormal entity classified as a ghost of some kind, even if they’re just someone with powers. After witnessing a lot of pain and suffering from ghosts in general, and the leftover trauma Ghost got from his time with CBF, whoever is in charge of OG PIE makes the executive decision that Ernie is either a weak link or an instigator of some kind and needs to be removed from the equation for the safety of others… Because he created CBF.

Whether this is the idea of a surviving T.Casket who feels the creation of CBF was an active attack, or the idea of a disheartened JGS who only sees what harm Ernie caused to his newly adopted child and not that it might have been an accident… I dunno yet. because of all this, CBF could see TT as a father or uncle figure, depending on how married it is to the idea that Gregory is his brother. If CBF finds out Ghost considers Ernie an uncle (since Ernie didn’t have any familial relation to T.Casket in my canon stuff, Ghost wouldn’t start calling Ernie his uncle until after getting adopted), it might change its song from siblings to cousins.

- Darth Calculus -

I don’t think TT has any reason to remember DC unless DC reaches out to him first, and even so in doing that it’ll give him a massive headache to try to recall. That’s three bouts of amnesia worth of buried memories to try to work through in order to really recall who this man is, and who’s to say that he’ll even like DC once he remembers? Billy liked him when he was little, but he’s had a lifetime’s worth of experiences between then and now, experiences that could include learning that DC basically kidnapped him after killing his birth family way back before he was taken in by him, something he was never aware of.

Considering Billy’s powers, I could see DC risking the possible hatred to try to get the TT on his side for his power, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether that would go well. I do think that without the shared history, DC would probably be able to convince TT to his side for various reasons… not least of which being him being generally annoyed by PIE before knowing what their deal is, but also DC could offer him a job and stuff. I can’t imagine he kept it for very long, but it’s a job.

- Johnny Ghost -

The TT isn’t sure how to feel about Johnny Ghost, specifically because he’s so much like his adopted father, but also so much like the kid he remembers being his nephew. It’s complicated. Long story short: his feelings toward Ghost is muddled with family issues. More about those family issues below…

- Johnny Ghost (Senior) -

JGS and Ernie used to be borderline inseparable, brothers against the world, but things started going downhill when T.Casket died. They originally joined PIE with open minds and curiosity toward the supernatural, but differing experiences has led to the pair growing differing conclusions toward the paranormal. Ernie was frequently given special attention by ghosts who recognized him as also being supernatural and came to appreciate them as people, JGS kept losing friend after friend to the paranormal, culminating in not one but THREE different kids of varying ages getting severely hurt or DYING (gregory, kat, goober in that order— maybe even Ronnie Boast if JGS lived to see it or Toast if he was open about why he was in the states) because they were seemingly targeted by a paranormal entity. Chakalata being one of those paranormal entities was a breaking point for JGS (he was like the first ghost to actually communicate with them, and the first one T.Casket actually considered a friend), and when he found out Ernie created one of the other ones, even if it was an accident… the realization caused irreversible damage to their relationship. And thus; Ernie got banished for the “safety of everybody”.

That’s just one of many ways Ernie could’ve gotten banished, and this actually contradicts another hc I like about how JGS died… but I’ll figure out how I can make them both work someday! I think his issues with this incident can explain why he’s bitter toward characters he otherwise should consider family, since his last memory of a family member is a borderline betrayal.

- Maddie-Friend -

Maddie is curious about TT like a cat being introduced to a large fern for the first time, and the TT isn’t sure how to feel about her. Since there’s no order on what memories he can get back first, he both remembers playing and training with her when they were both kids under DC, but also his first time meeting her in a movie theater after moving in with the Acachallas. The two just need a couple heart-to-hearts to work everything out. Maddie wants to ask him if he ever recovered his first memories, but that’s kind of a hard question to ask an amnesiac. He thinks of her fondly, though, like a much younger sister he hasn’t seen in awhile. He thinks her antics chasing him around are pretty funny, though he does get uncomfortable when she turns violent.

- Maxwell Acachalla -

(All my own HCs) Maxwell and TT are kinda awkward around each other just because. They both kind of remind each other of things they don’t want to think about.

Billy impulsively brought Maxwell back from the dead, one of the only times he ever tried doing it on purpose, accidentally forcing Maxwell to be stuck as a ghost. He finds the reasoning dumb in hindsight, and he feels bad that he killed Spencer to do, it too (that part was less impulse, more that Spencer was really frustrating at the time and Billy needed a sacrifice. He didn’t think it’d matter since… ~back from the dead~ and all that, but Spencer was taken by surprise and holds grudges). Maxwell’s existence is kind of a reminder of all of that, like an uncomfortable trigger for his memory.

Maxwell and Billy look a lot alike when Billy is living with the Acachallas, and Billy was definitely the kid Papa felt the most kinship toward early on (possibly because Billy looked like his dead cousin coughcoUgHcOUGH—). So, Maxwell grew to recognize the similarities between himself and Billy, not just visually but as people… and TT is a prime example of who Maxwell could be if he had gotten to really life his life. Especially if the two ever interact without family or paranormal problems as a buffer… This is part of the reason why I like hc’ing Maxwell as being about 16-17 when he died tbh. Ig im big into ~Drama~ ^^;

However, the two are still technically family, so being frequently paired together has managed to get them to a point where they can actually interact with each other without feeling uncomfortable.

- Papa Acachalla -

(All my own HCs) The TT incredibly unsettled Papa and has a spotlight in his nightmares. Not because of anything specifically that the TT has done, but solely because the TT is proof that Papa fucks this one up too. He was originally uncomfortable with growing close with Billy because of what happened to Maxwell. Similarly to Billy, Maxwell looked up to Papa and saw him as a role model to follow, and in doing so it got him killed, and now Maxwell hates him and wants him dead. Papa was originally on edge about Billy, but was slowly beginning to think this one might be different the more the Acachalla family became… well, a family. However, unlike Maxwell— who died young— Billy lives a long, long time… and still comes back around to hating Papa. It’s like a cruel twist of fate, and even the idea that somehow he managed to screw this one over too made Papa pull away from the entire family again for awhile after the TT admitted to Billy they were the same person. TT isn’t sure how he feels about Papa. Something in the back of his head is convinced that Papa did or will do something wrong at some point, but he can’t put his finger on what or when, or how important it all really is. He tries not to think about it. So… he matches the energy of the people around him, and just chooses to be aggressive rather than figure out what’s actually going on.

Rapid Fire

I really want him to keep the wings, but I’m not sure how I want to take the aesthetic yet. I usually take Billy in the direction of angel imagery, so for the TT i can either stick with angel imagery, move up to ARCHangel imagery or something more “biblically accurate”— or I could move waaaay down to FALLEN angel imagery.

He was taken into the Ghost family after being found soon after traveling through time for likely the first time, completely disoriented and with no memories. They took him in, and they started seeing him as family. Whether this is because he married in or because he was adopted in, I have yet to decide, but I think both are interesting in their own right.

Something about him being a Smigglebug (which I see as some kind of magic family) is important in some way, and likely has something to do with some part of his powers. However, since Sue is also a Smigglebug (even if from another universe), whatever this is for Billy it should be for Sue as well.

Additionally, the TT does not know what a Smigglebug is, nor that he is one of them. He’d just assume you’re talking nonsense.

He has accidentally committed tax evasion. He also doesn’t know it yet because he kind of forgot how that whole system works, especially in the modern day.

I think waffles are a bit of a comfort food for him before he starts to recover his memory because it’s vaguely familiar.

Might be related in some way to Dark Pit (founding member of early PIE)/Agent Angel (one-off character I latched onto for no reason), considered making Ernie Ghost his dad and saying Ghost and DP/AA are cousins, but that means saying that the TT settled down and had a FAMILY for a little while and I dunno how I feel about that.

With this in mind, Roast is the TT’s favorite PIE member because Roast was actually friends with DP. Long story short, DP and Roast were the oldest members of the team by a couple years, so they mostly just acted as overseers for the chaos, so Ernie came to respect that in what is possibly his son’s friend.

Alt is that Ernie liked Roast’s more… ruthless ideas on how to handle ghosts, I’m not sure yet but it does worry me.

He is a genuinely good leader. He listens to people when they express discontent and he listens to people and learns about them. The downside is that he isn’t much of a team player, and this mostly winds up being used against people.

Depending on how open he is about being related to Johnny Ghost, he’s likely been approached by the DIE team before. Either that or they’re trying to approach him, I imagine he’s incredibly hard to track down and find.

Songs and Why

- Hymn to a Scarecrow by Tally Hall

It’s a soft song that feels like it hits home the general vibe I feel about the TT’s character, I sometimes picture it as Maddie-Friend observing her friend from the future and trying to figure out who he is now.

- Community Gardens by The Scary Jokes

The TT is considered to be a monster of some kind, and I think this is the kind of energy he’d have while trying to acknowledge it… while trying to give Billy advice on how not to end up like him.

- Godspeed by Shayfer James?

I think it needs to be considered in a specific way but yeah, I could see it. Man is allowed to set some boundaries, as a treat.

- Falling Up by Will Wood?