... But before that; Yes, hi! - I apparently sometimes post here still despite my 2018 hyperfixation of Studio 100 being rather cooled off nowadays. It still comes back from time to time. I swear, when you’ve been hyperfixating on something hard enough it never truly leaves you, it just sleeps until you feed it again!

Anyways!

I remember when I watched their Sneeuwwitje musical for the first time back in 2018 and the incredible idea that got stuck with me that Thyssen’s role as Aime acted very similarly to the original Aimé. Remember?

Still with me? Good!

I was re-watching the musical this summer (or, actually, I was listening to the songs and just saw all the scenes with Aimé in them because the rest of the musical is shockingly boring - There, I said it!) and it just hit me, suddenly; The queen calls him struisvogel (ostrich) at one point to mock him:

... And as I was doing a fanart as a quick warmup one day- ;

- I realised that he is indeed covered in feathers! (Don’t ask me how I’ve missed that before, I must’ve been blinded by his expressive beautiful eyes or something-) This opened up a new revolutionary idea in my head (wow that sounded way more serious than it actually is); What if the character of Aimé is just modeled after a butler bird, similar to Zazu from the Lion King?

But!! If that is the case!

... Does that mean that Aimé - the actor - is acting in a birdlike manner in many of his roles?

Is Aimé a bird?

I am glad you asked. Here’s me nerding out over Dipper nerding out over Star Wars.

The lightsaber only really has one real button, about ¾ths up the hilt. This button is of course the on button. It’s made to be hard to click on accident.

Exactly how the thing works is too much bizarre physics for me to figure out, but I can assure you that it’s complicated, and it takes about as much power as a small nuclear power plant. It’s not all magic either, it’s magitech of a level that humans wouldn’t reach for the next several centuries. He wanted it to be as real as possible, and he wanted it to last. Enchantements can wear off, this thing will last for millennia.

Between the on button and the top of the hilt, there’s a switch which is really just a ring you have to twist around. That’s the safety. When it’s off, it glows the same colour of the lightsaber, and the sword is now a very dangerous weapon. When it’s on, the sword is no more dangerous than a regular metal stick with an extremely powerful power source inside. This was a thing he added to the design when he realized how easy it would be to kill yourself with it if you weren’t careful.

At the bottom of the hilt, there are two more rings, which are dials. These control the colour of the lightsaber, and you can either turn both of them, or just the outermost one. They have several of the normal settings, green, blue, purple and red, plus a black one. The outermost dial is a bit more exact, and can give you almost every colour of the colour wheel.

Right at the end of it hilt, there’s a display that shows which colour is currently on. This lights up when the safety is off, and otherwise just shows flat colours.

Dipper usually keeps it on the white setting, because the design is already very energy inefficient, and the colour filters take even more. The black setting is ultra violet. That one was a bad idea, because it’s invisible to mortals, and because it’s high energy enough that it tends to harm the weilder. A lot.

The lightsaber can either deflect or disintegrate bullets, depending on how you hit them, but you need very superhuman reflexes and strong enough arms, so Dipper’s the only one who can do it in practice. He likes to show off with it.

He has a few rules he insists on giving anyone who borrows it.

1) Always keep the safety on unless you’re using the sword.

2) Always keep in mind that this thing can and will cut off your hand if you let it.