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#its very present in the narrative and his conflicted feelings over wilbur really shine through how he divides wilbur into two people
zeta-in-de-walls · 2 years
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Hey, hey. Some friends were discussing how there’s quite a lot of fan art from season 2 of the SMP featuring Tommy wearing Wilbur’s Pogtopia coat. Nowadays you might read it as a mark of Wilbur’s and Tommy’s character’s closeness but actually the origin is more interesting than that! 
It actually stems from the same place as drawing Tubbo with Ram’s horns, another popular fanart design that continues to be really popular. That one is linking Tubbo with Schlatt.
So, shortly before Tommy was exiled in S2, Tommy and Tubbo were in conflict. There were both angry as exiling Tommy to appease Dream was being contemplated. And that’s where Tommy quite literally told Tubbo not to turn into another Schlatt and Tubbo’s reply was that he wouldn’t turn into Schlatt if Tommy didn’t become another Wilbur. Quite an explicit parallel was being drawn. 
And yeah, this was a significant part of each of their character arcs over season 2 as Tubbo unhappily ruled over New L’Manburg while slowly being abandoned by his citizens as he planned another festival. Meanwhile Tommy was growing depressed in his exile which ultimately lead to him living with Techno and giving in to the idea of destroying L’Manberg and giving up on all his old friends.
Both of them seemed doomed to follow this same path right up until the festival where they both finally rejected these parallels with Tommy deciding to defend L’Manburg instead and Tubbo standing up to Quackity and refusing to execute the treacherous Ranboo before also joining Tommy to defend their home, fighting together, their friendship finally restored.
So that brings me on to the art - the art was depicting Tommy in Wilbur’s coat (and sometimes beanie too) and Tubbo with Schlatt horns and a suit as a visual representation of their conflict and struggle over this season. It can capture in a single image what’s going on. Which is pretty cool! Adding these physical symbols to represent a character’s internal struggles and motivations is always really appealing to me. 
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