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danvillecheese · 10 months

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the general audience versus the rest of us

this analysis is not to degrade anyone outside of or in the fandom, it’s simply to showcase how differently people remember phineas and ferb. there are a number of topics I will delve into, all of which are lovingly put into sections under the cut. so, with no further ado… enjoy!

how normal people watch it

so if you’re like me and watched pnf occasionally on tv growing up you’ll remember bits of the show. you’ll remember it’s repetitive and episodic nature, the way everything goes back to how it was at the start of the day. phineas and ferb think of something to do, candace attempts to bust them, perry fights doofenshmirtz, and doofs machine makes phineas and ferb’s invention disappear, sticking to the status quo of what linda typically sees. it’s predictable, but not in the sense that you necessarily know what’s going to happen. maybe you do, or something happens that subverts your expectations. the “typical phineas and ferb episode structure” (or TPNFES, I’m calling it that now) is how a lot of people who haven’t seen the show in a while will remember it. or maybe not. maybe they remember doof making an inator that does x. or they remember the aglet song (never forget ze aglet!). it’s typically something you’d have seen at least a couple of times during its original run.

and no, of course there’s no problem with only remembering one or two things about a show from your youth. I personally watched a lot of shows as a kid that I don’t remember a thing about. yeah I watched LazyTown when I was like four but if you asked me the plot of any episode I would NOT be able to tell you. and it’s because it wasn’t something I was really interested in. and of course, kids can be interested in shows and know a lot about them and then hit their teen years and not remember much about them later. but if they go back and absorb that content again? they see stuff they missed the first time, or stuff they definitly remember. hell, they might even sing along to A.G.L.E.T. because as everyone knows, pnf lyrics stay with you forever. (even if you haven’t heard the theme song in a decade you won’t forget the lyrics. that shit is hardwired into you from the moment you first see it.)

my point is, a casual viewer doesn’t do anything more than just… watch the show. hell, sometimes they don’t even watch it, they’ll have it on in the background while they’re on their phone or doing something else (couldn’t be me!!). watching the canon content just once gives them the satisfaction of starting and ending the show. they don’t go into detail about it. they probably won’t open an ao3 tab the moment the last episode finishes. they won’t make a tumblr sideblog dedicated to understanding the intricacies of character arcs, their goals and ideals and how they interact with others. they don’t care enough to do that bc it doesn’t make their brain go insane for more knowledge about the show. and as strange as it sounds, they don’t have it on their minds for that long. yeah, maybe theyll think about how nice the songs were in that s4 finale but after that, that’s it. they’ll move onto something else.

how I watched it

I watched phineas and ferb as a kid. I’m pretty sure I watched it when it first aired, too. perhaps not in 2007, it might have been the year after when it actually started premiering (nz airing is so far behind it’s not even funny). I watched it as it aired, and then grew out of it around the middle of s3. I got a little older, started watching different shows, and I was just generally doing other stuff. I have a vivid memory from 2012 when a kid from my class told me that pnf wasn’t worth watching bc the same thing happens every episode and my socially inept ass went “omg ur so right” and I stopped watching it. fast forward a couple of years and I hear that the show is like, actually finally ending. idk why but I remember it being in 2014, not 2015 when it actually did air (the pnf wiki doesn’t have the date for the nz airing of last day of summer so I guess we'll never know if it aired early or not) but I watched it and kinda just carried on with my other interests at the time.

around 2017, I start talking to an internet friend from the same country as me. we talked about our upbringings and stuff we used to watch on tv, and she brings up phineas and ferb. aha! I know that one! it encourages me to rewatch the show and before I know it, I’m shoulder deep. i mention facts about it to real life friends and family (“there’s a pnf episode where…”) and I go hunting for interviews and comic-con panels with the whole cast on youtube. you know how it is. I start going through the posts on tumblr and I find a sibling show of sorts – one that also has a crossover planned for 2018. I watch that show. I lurk in the shadows of the tumblr tag for a while. I start writing fic. I draw the characters on any piece of paper I can get my hands on.

it all comes to a head in october 2018, when I wrote a phinjeet fic called cappuccino, and one of my favourite artists EVER made fanart of it. and obviously, I had to put it somewhere. I’d thought about making a dwampy sideblog for ages and had no idea what to call it or anything, but this was all the encouragement I needed. I made the sideblog. I reblog the art. then I went through my likes and got some of the pnf/mml posts out. fast forward almost five years, and here we are. still just as insane, just with a new username.

in short — no, my experience watching pnf is not one of those typical of a general audience member. I mean, it would have been, if not for that fateful conversation with my internet friend that basically rebooted me and quite literally rewired my brain to be insane about this cartoon universe. I’m not by any means a casual viewer of this show. I know more than an average person would about it, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I adore this little community of ours. and being able to crack out of context jokes that come from the shows to older people who I know have never seen it, well, it’s a cherry on top.

both the GA and the fandom contribute to the culture staying alive

there’s certainly a way that the general audience keeps pnf alive, even if they have no idea they’re doing it. they’ll make very generic memes about it (you know the ones I’m talking about) and they’ll circulate the internet for a bit, reminding everyone about the show they watched casually as a kid. us, on the other hand, make very very niche memes about it. like hieroglyphics. and combovers. (see what I did there?) ours tend to stay in our little circulation, minus the ones that break containment. you get it in any fandom though, it’s certainly not limited to us.

as many times as you’ll see the posts that attempt to explain the ‘doof is phineas dad theory’, you’ll see just as many responses debunking it. or seeing dan and swampy debunk it, as they should. (honestly I think we need like crystal fucking clear evidence in the reboot to explain it otherwise it’s just gonna keep happening.)

the circulation of phineas and ferb itself through any means, be it memes or actual conversation that prompts a rewatch or even just a memory of the show, keeps the show relevant. I think one of the more notable ways this has happened is dan povenmire getting tiktok famous and basically reminding every older gen z kid about the show. to quote jeff swampy marsh – “plus there’s always reruns so the show will never die” – sure, disney channel itself barely exists anymore but reruns can also kinda be translated into disney+ rewatches or even just the passage of a meme on the internet.

phineas and ferb has stayed, somewhat, consistently relevant. I mean, think about it. since pnf started airing, there hasn’t been a year (except for 2021) where nothing has happened. pnf aired from 2007-2015, milo murphy’s law aired from 2016-2019 (which includes phineas and ferb characters so I count it as pnf content) and catu came out in 2020. dan’s own show hamster and gretel started airing in 2022, and based on the poster, I don’t think we’ll be missing any phineas and ferb characters at all. dan basically confirmed it. and truly, it’s what keeps the show alive, even when it’s not really there.

things in the show that the ga have very different opinions on, re:

candace and jeremy’s relationship

something the general audience haven’t caught up with yet is the way that candace and jeremy interact within the show. sure, if you haven’t watched it since you were 10 then you probably remember candace being like insane and loud about the boy she’s obsessed with. if you watch it again, you’ll see that jeremy is almost just as bad. it’s just downplayed because he’s not a main character. we don’t see his perspective NEARLY as much as we see candace’s, which might make it seem a bit more one sided or unrequited than it actually is.

in the episode “backyard aquarium” from early s2, we’re shown a montage of both candace and jeremy trying to ring each other for a whole day, until candace goes to bust her brothers and forgets about her phone for a little moment. this gives jeremy time to leave eleven messages for her. obsessed much? (it’s actually kinda sweet) and yeah, they’re teenagers. every feeling seems way more amplified than it actually is so both of them getting upset that they cant contact each other is pretty realistic, even if it is just played for laughs.

there’s a lot of really thorough characterisation when it comes to both of them. mostly with candace, obviously, she is THEE main character of the show so clearly she’s deep and very fleshed out. we don’t see it as much with jeremy but we get pretty good glimpses of it when it’s shown. he’s got the picture of her from “the bully code” in his guitar case. he likes her so much! he put her picture in the place he keeps one of his favourite things!! he’s down so bad for her! but of course, if you don’t actually pay attention or care especially about any of that stuff, you’re going to miss it and generalise about it. and it unfortunately applies to quite a few things in the show. sigh.

doof’s relationship with his parents

for real, fuck those guys. I think the ga are pretty aware of this part, and if you asked anyone to say what one of doofs backstories are they’d probably say “his parents didn’t show up for his birth!” or “he was a lawn gnome!”. both of which are specifically tied to his abhorrent relationship with his parents. but what they potentially don’t remember is how he still tries to gain their affections anyways. it’s the classic trope of not being able to cut off your abusers simply because you just can’t, morally. you still want to prove yourself to them and make them see you’re worth having around even if they never liked you in the first place. heinz tries very hard both in his youth and in the show itself to gain affection from both his mother and father. these include:

the teddy bear and trying to be good at kickball (thaddeus and thor)

the original gnome (fathers day)

even the fucking clip show episode from the end of season 3 (this is your backstory) where his mother comes back and he goes in for a hug and is instead greeted with a smack. hmm.

even just those examples are enough evidence that yes, heinz did actually really try with his parents even if they didn’t care. and again, it’s unfortunately played for laughs that heinz is constantly beaten down by almost everything around him but as we know, he gets a real family at the end of the show and things seem to work out well for him. does he get closure with both of his parents by the end of s4? maybe not his mother, but sort of with his dad. and yeah, maybe they’ll get into that in the reboot. but it’s definitely something the ga never noticed. it’s always about laughing at his tragic backstories, even if that is the point of them, not necessarily feeling bad for him and wanting to see him come full circle with everything that’s happened to him. and it does!

isabella and her one (1) personality trait

according to the ga, isabella garcia-shapiro is a one dimensional character who’s only personality trait is having tunnel vision heart eyes for the boy across the street. is your blood boiling yet? mine is! isabella is one of the most fleshed out characters in the show, with a large family and interests outside of phineas. hell, she’s the leader of her fireside girls troop which is a huge part of her personality. she’s brave and strong and gives ominous patch related threats to a man almost five times her age. but no, the general audience will only ever see isabella as the girl obsessed with phineas. I’m not discrediting this at all because yes, she’s obsessed with him. she’s a simp. definitely nothing wrong with that at all! but the ga claiming that it’s her only personality trait? get fucking REAL this girl is deep and gets upset and anxious and emotional about things that have nothing to do with the boy she’s in love with. even if it does have something to do with that, she carries on anyway because she’s strong as hell. it’s not the first time a character has been like that on disney channel — I mean, kim possible was pretty boy crazy but her crime fighting always came first, right? (really showing my age with that reference. wow) and I hate to reference act your age bc it’s vile but she doesn’t only ever spend her time moping over phineas as a teenager, she keeps herself busy and helps her mom at the restaurant and is an RA at her college and does a whole heap of other things! she’s multifaceted and it’s what makes her a really compelling character to watch. and watering her down into just the girl who likes phineas is a huge discredit to her character.

so, where am I going with this?

I’m not saying ever general audience member has to rewatch phineas and ferb a million times to understand every single character arc. hell, I’m not even saying that they have to rewatch it at all. there’s such a huge divide when it comes to it, and obviously not everyone is going to experience everything the same way. a lot of people simply don’t care enough to crack open the psyche of every phineas and ferb character to understand their motivations. that’s just the freaks (affectionate) who roam on tumblr, eager for media analysis of a childrens cartoon that ended almost a decade ago.

for a lot of us, it’s very satisfying to be able to analyse specific media. there’s writers and storyboard artists that put all that stuff in the show for a reason, right? it makes us want to see parallels and understand where a characters moral alignment sits and why exactly buford speaks latin. and for others, they’ll simply watch a show and move on. there’s no need for them for it to be on their brain 24/7.

overall, there’s a stark difference in the way people watch a show as iconic and culturally significant as phineas and ferb. the general audience watches it very differently to us, and that’s okay! it happens with any piece of media. there’s casual fans that watch something once and then the very not casual fans who have it on the brain constantly. and then there’s fans that have been very absorbed in the fandom and move on, which again, you’ll get anywhere. nothing about the dwampyverse fandom is limited to us, in terms of the way things go (not the source media itself. name one other show that has anything REMOTELY similar to pnf happen in it.) most people know the show, and most people don’t know about the insane and obscure facts about it, and I think it’s fantastic.

goodnight tri-state area. thank you.

#phineas and ferb #cj writes unecessary analysis abt a show that ended almost a decade ago. nothing new here #in my insane era (again)#dwampyverse analysis

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blueeandyellowmakesgreen · 2 years

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so. phinbella and byler.

thinking about this post where it compares byler and phinbella from phineas and ferb along with more important points and,,,

and the more i think about it, the more i get confident. bc im now realizing how.. alike the two pairings actually are, especially now that its official that will ripped off the bandaid and decided to move on.

yes im making a long-ass parallel analysis involving stranger things and phineas and ferb. dont talk to me

so in PnF, phineas and isabella are established as childhood best friends first, who clearly love each other. in how the episodes are set up, we always see isabella's pov and never get a glimpse of phineas'. mike and phineas are the same in regards to both being clearly intelligent leaders but oblivious as fuck when it comes to emotions or feelings. (lol though the difference between isabella and will is that isabella was BLATANTLY obvious and phineas' obliviousness was supposed to be played off as a joke bc of how dense he is)

but even if phineas is dense, he always, always showed signs of caring about isabella. some examples of what he did for her was building an entire haunted house to cure her hiccups, giving her an extravagant surprise birthday party, and even making a giant ice cream sundae to help cure her tonsilitis.

he also has instances where he just says shit friends arent Supposed to Say to Each Other

(hmm...who else do we see showing their friend a lot more attention and care that goes.. beyond platonic territory?)

phineas and mike are the same in the way they show a special kind of love to isabella and will. yes, they still both care about the others in their group, but other people can vouch they wouldn't do the things they did for anyone else other than their respective best friends. in core, it is romantic, even if the person doesnt know it is.

and as for the comparison between isabella and will, theyre devoted and head over heels in love with their best friends, but are terrified of how the other will think. they both also had moments where they pushed their own feelings aside for the good of the other and for their happiness, even if it means that isabella and will dont get what they want because they love them way too much.

anyway im mostly talking about mike and phineas here bc of the solidarity with their mind being full of rocks

so moving on to the episode where phinbella got together.

this episode was considered a miracle because we finally got to see both phineas and isabella's pov. isabella moved on during jhs and became more distant due to her planning for college and other volunteer work.

but even after everything, despite trying to forget phineas, it only took her seeing one photo of him for all of that effort to be in vain because she realizes that 10 years of friendship is too much to just 'get over'.

sound familiar on whose arc that's similar to? that's right, will. if we’re referring to the script, will is in the process of deciding to move on in s4 and keep his distance, accepting the fact he lost mike to el; when we as the viewers know he didnt. he's too caught up in his own insecurities to realize mike values him a lot, hence the bedroom scene between him and mike. will is gonna realize eventually that no matter how much he tries, he cannot let go of mike so easily considering their years of history.

as for phineas, its revealed he genuinely did not know that isabella loved him despite all the hints she gave to him. and its only after she left and became more distant during summer that phineas realizes how much he valued her, and even confirmed he started having feelings for her during high school. it also took other people to say it to his face that isabella had a giant crush on him for him to finally look for her and confess before she goes off to college.

again, another parallel! theyre both oblivious as fuck!

mike is confirmed by finn and the duffers that mike knows jack shit about what will feels. the script that was released showed us absolutely no insight on mike's thoughts, which is already telling on itself.

and in the end, phineas and isabella chased each other, talked, and finally admitted their feelings for one another and got together.

it leaves us the good kind of ambiguity that if mike is clueless, it doesnt mean he'll react to will negatively. thats the reason the possibility of mike finding out will lied about the painting is SO important because it's the end all be all moment for both of them. the ‘Oh.’ moment. so if mike and will just talk, then everything falls into place. they will have THE heart to heart.

so in conclusion, if we think about it this way and compared them both a bit more on how will 'ripped off the bandaid', it doesnt immediately mean its over. because like people said, will decided to move on, but that is not an utmost guarantee that the boy will. 10 years of feelings is not something you can forget or move past from. and lastly, we know nothing about mike's pov and how he's gonna take it if he does find out.

this realization also hit me harder on how fucking romantic coded byler is because of how many parallels we can pick up from these two alone. we have the perfect setup of person A falling in love and giving up. now, we're just missing person B’s realisation, then chasing A. finally they talk, probably kiss, and for once be on the same page.

this shit aint over, guys. byler is endgame.

#byler #this may be dumb. this may be incoherent. buthear me out #yes finally im using my childhood's useless knowledge abt phineas and ferb to good use. i think

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