thinking about how one clings to pencil and freesmart itself as a result because she projects herself onto them and their struggles
and the fact that the big freesmart arc going on right now is that ultimately you DO need to move on with your life and that sometimes some things can't be fixed suggests that almost ironically one needs to learn this herself, particularly regarding three
mostly making this post because as the defeat one tpot trilogy draws near i am admittedly scared that the ball will somehow be dropped and i'm like. trying to reason with myself that jnj has been setting up the theme that the past (not just your own) will always be in the past and trying to cling to it and your rose-tinted nostalgia for it will just hurt you more. pencil (potentially) in her timeloop. robot flower. clock. four.
like please god do not "fix" her disability. i BEG
plus with four knowing how to recover people realistically if three being "fixed" was a desired end goal then he could've tried recovering her again a longgggg time ago
though if recovering her has been attempted (unlikely) and if someone tries to recover three now (i'm scared) i hope it's like a saw gets to keep her pink handle thing where three won't go back to her abled self because of how important how she is now is to her identity. [sort of like how in homestuck terezi's dream self is blinded just like her waking self is because it's so important to her vs how the dream self version of vriska's arm is healed because she dgaf about it (either that or the idealized version of who she currently is is one that isn't disabled, which would fit her character a lot).]
it could also have a lot of commentary on bfdi fans as well. one has been repeatedly shown to project her and her insecurities on the object cast, and a lot of her contracts involve "fixing" something about the contestants, particularly with their limbs. for a show with so many characters with missing limbs or other disabilities, the fanbase often erases those traits because they often don't consider their disabilities as important to their characters, outside of a basic source of angst (angst that one again likes to project onto characters, even if it completely misses the mark. the easiest example to bring up is her with leafy here). (when thinking of the fans in relation to this think of: a lot of gijinka designs) this is displayed within the show as being a bad thing.
this leads into a lot of "doomed yuri onethree fans" and how they often center one in conversations and art about the pairing. three's disability is mostly just used for angst, when they don't try to "fix" it and "undoom the yuri" so to speak. get-the-family-back-together-again asgore deltarune style
one similarly disregards three's character outside of her need to "fix her" and use her as a way of absolving herself of her actions so everyone will "finally love her" (also take into consideration one's own internalized ableism and how she feels she needs to fit a very specific mold of herself, one that has value to others, in order to be deserving of it in the first place. she needs to have something to offer. something to fix. otherwise, nobody will want to be around her because ultimately she thinks nobody would be able to love her for being her and her alone.) she also uses everything that happened with and after three as justification for her further actions taken to "get revenge" on her old friends.
she continues to use three's existence as something to shift the blame towards. it's not that one did anything wrong. it's that three is hurt and needs to be saved, like she's dying or already dead! like she's not still her own unique individual person who is still very much alive, even with her isolation. a sentiment i have seen echoed throughout how a lot of people pair them together.
this isn't to say you aren't allowed to like onethree, heck, it can be a very interesting pairing to explore if done right. nor do i think that people who fall into this pit are like. fucked up and horrible or anything. it's just a common trend i've found that i do criticize a lot, and can speak to greater fandom's ableism internalized or otherwise as well. like this isn't new to fandom at all, but that doesn't mean it should be taken any less seriously.
circling back from my tangent to one and pencil:
pencil in particular is where she is right now partially and critically because of the influence and her experience with the Two BFDI Fans Ever (four and one) and still clings onto this idea of freesmart even though everyone else has moved on or is trying to. we mustn't forget this either. it could be a whole other post in of itself (this post is already long enough), no matter how much it's been posted elsewhere. it's just so so interesting
and i feel like the bfdi fans who are applicable to this commentary are in a similar position of misreading characters they could otherwise learn from partially due to their own projection and romanticization of when the show wasn't "doomed." the show and what it looked like when they were younger.
before the bad things happened. before the world was big.
ultimately i hope that the show follows through with everything they've built up so far. and that they never fix three.
