#simply human

This sentence, does in fact ring true, as Wilbur currently has no one beside him except for Tommy, but it was said to successfully influence him in order for Tommy to choose him over c!Quackity but unlike how the fandom seems to see him- no, not every single interaction he takes is “mansplain manipulate, malewife” some of it is,,, actually genuine. Shocker. Many people I’ve seen seem to place him on the same level of evil as c!Dream, or close to it. Yes, he has done fucked up things, but his fucked up things were mostly due to his paranoia and deteriorating mental health, and alongside those bad things, he has also done moderately good things not for him to “gaslight gatekeep girlboss” the people around him, but because he is a person, unlike Dream, who has been pure malice. 

His conversations with Ranboo went as follows:

Ranboo: “...And then I also think- just you know- you can- you know - I think you’re an alright person....”

Wilbur: “Why?”

[Healthy Competition, Timestamp: 35:05 - 35:15]

Wilbur immediately stops here and is genuinely surprised by the idea of someone thinking of him in a remotely positive light.   

“Can I be real with you man? I think I scare people.” [ Wilbur, Healthy Competition, Timestamp: 36:32 - 36:39 ]

The breakdown that follows this conversation was clearly not planned by c!Wilbur. This is the closest he’s ever been to actually opening up to people about his issues. 

“....I’m going to stop psychoanalysing now. Let’s- Let’s [pause] Ranboo how’d you feel about thievery?” [Wilbur, Healthy Competition] 

He immediately completely changes the subject, and moves on to different tasks after this. 

Wilbur clearly believes that he remains firmly unlovable for fair reasons, and he genuinely does want to change, as seen from his reaction to what Ranboo said about him. Up till here, i think he has no ulterior motive. I think it was a little “bonding moment” with Ranboo, a little similar to his relationship with Tommy. He did not use his breakdown as a manipulation tactic, it was quite the opposite.  I believe if he wanted to actually manipulate him, he wouldn’t have been so reluctant to start this burger van business with Ranboo beforehand either.

A conversation I had with someone was them saying it was done to find out about Ranboo’s weak spots. I believe Wilbur did not need to open himself up to do so. He already understood what the kind of person Ranboo already was. His first interaction with Ranboo shows this already. He had no need for Ranboo to do anything other than share his resources, which he already was doing. This breakdown did not exploit, or convince Ranboo- he was already, and Wilbur was well aware of this. It was unintentional, and genuine.

What he did after that, though, I think were all tests, of sorts, starting from how comfortable Ranboo would be with him stealing Las Nevadas’ cows and then getting him to break the glass and blow up part of Las Nevada’s restaurant, I think parallels how Wilbur got Tommy to bring stacks upon stacks of stone to him. He wanted to test how far they’d both go to execute his orders. And they both had the same answer - quite far.

 His idea of relationships has been severely warped, which goes back to the very beginning of L’manburg, where he’d get Tommy to call him  President even after being exiled, and wanting to be the higher ground as he and Tommy argued during A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on them. He clearly does care, but he fundamentally always seems to have relationships where he is the higher ground. I think this stems from his own idea of him only having worth when he’s actually useful, which can be seen from his interaction with Quackity during A Deck of Cards with a Green Smile on Them.

 One thing that stood out to me was in timestamp 35:45, where he opens up his inventory and hovers his mouse over the stack of TNT. This was the foreshadowing of what was to happen at the end, where Ranboo blew up part of Las Nevadas’ restauraunt.