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In the episode “The Waste of Time” there is a quick shot of a character called Monkeyboy when Wander & Sylvia are going back in time. The shot is implied to be from an event that happened before the start of the series. Frank Angones confirmed his name and revealed that he was intended to play a “big part” in season 3.
The character’s relevancy is further established by the cliffhanger ending of season 2. An American flag can be seen on both the escape pod from the ending and the monkey’s astronaut suit. Those are some strong parallels that I’m sure most people in the fandom have picked up on by now. It’s hard to ignore because we have NEVER seen evidence that Earth exists in the show aside from these two instances! That alone makes me excited!
But wait, there’s more! The final shot shows green electricity coming out of the crashed escape pod, along with monkey noises that transition into Hater’s evil laugh. This leads me to believe that Hater’s origin story is somehow tied to Monkeyboy. And revealing something big like that about a main character would be totally new territory for the show! One popular theory is that he IS Monkeyboy, or was. I can see that being true since Craig McCracken has a track record with villainous monkey characters.
This may be purposefully misleading, however, because how could Monkeyboy play a big part in season 3 if he was only found within Hater’s backstory? Another theory I have is that Hater and Monkeyboy knew each other at one point, exploring space together, until Hater betrayed him. That way Monkeyboy could show up to take his revenge against Hater in season 3. He looks fairly pissed off in that one image we see of him.
Maybe in the past they were both monkeys or maybe Hater was a human astronaut with a monkey companion. There are many possible ways it could go, but even putting aside all the fan speculation, I love that this new character is based on the actual history of space travel. From 1948 to 1993, monkeys and chimps were routinely launched into space by the USA. It was incredibly dangerous for the animals involved since they were the first to test the equipment. Looking back at the screenshots, I wonder if the spacecraft that Monkeyboy (and maybe Hater) was in simply malfunctioned or if there was another element at play.
REMINDER: russia still occupies parts of georgia and ukraine since 2008 and 2014, respectively.
If you want to support Ukrainians, DO NOT donate to Red Cross. Can't speak about their work in other countries, but they're useless in Ukraine. The only trustworthy international organisation I can think of is World Central Kitchen.
Donate to World Central Kitchen
And it's even better to donate directly to Ukrainian organisations. Here are a few good legit places:
hospitallers.life - "Hospitallers", Ukrainian paramedics on the frontlines
savelife.in.ua - "Come Back Alive", assistance to the army
prytulafoundation.org - "Prytula Foundation", assistance to the army, humanitarian causes
starenki.com.ua - "Starenki", helping elderly people
everybodycan.com.ua - "Everybody Can", helping disabled children, elders and hospitals
uanimals.org - "UAnimals", saving animals
Okay confession time: I disliked Wander for years and now I'm realising that the only problem I have with him is that he is not called out on his bullshit/mistakes when it's really important.
I just feel like he is only shown as being in the wrong about small things. "He wants to help too much, even if people don't want it! He ignores his health to help others!"
But these are laughably small. Remindes me of when a person makes a character but they don't want to gives them any actual flaws so it's just "They are too kind/smart/etc".
Main problem (for me) is that Wander actually has big, intresting flaws with his character. But they are not explored. I cannot treat the episode about him trying to help people that are fine when. Everything else. I'm going to give 2 main examples that give me the most discomfort. You can skip if you understand.
1. Constant invasion of boundaries, to the point where "when he is a villain he deserves it" doesn't personally work for me. The entire fremergency episode.. Also the one where he and hater sang on stage. Why is he so weird about unconsious/not fully there Hater. He immediately makes him do/say things (in public or even on camera) that he would not say usually. Imagine someone you know is drunk so you take them in a public place to act like you are close while your buddy is filming that. I get Hater is a villain but damn... I'm not asking for a big callout or anything, can we at least not do the "it's so sad that he has to return :(" thing in the end.. Wander overstepping everyone's boundaries is so consistent it's a character trait, but it's mostly played for laughs/ignored/endorsed. It's not only villains... I remember this one animatic (scrapped/after credit scene, don't remember) where he pets Sylvia and his hand goes down to her tail so she has to physically stop him. Also a lot of other minor stuff, but.. I feel like this is more glaring than "oh he's just too sweet and kind".
2. The entire dominator.. Thing. Wander sees a trolley problem with the entire galaxy vs dominator (+hater stops being a villain), and decides he wants to save everyone. No matter how right you think he was, he did not achieve what he wanted. Dominator did not change. Hater did, but not complitely. But innocent people died. We can't just ignore that Hater has the power to stop Dominator, and one of the main reasons he didn't was because Wander was helping him out with Dominator. Look at Hater's face when Dominator laughs at his confession. He's not even surprised. He would 100% give up sooner if Wander wasn't hyping him up so much. Wander actually made sure that the only person capable of defeating Dominator was peaceful towards her for as long as he could. How many people lost their homes/died while him and Hater were busy with their crap? Again, I know this is a children's show. And yes, Wander is presented as being wrong, but un a really weird way. It's more about Dominator than her victims. It's more "Not everyone wants to change/be your friend/some people are just enemies" etc. The show shows (haha) that Wander was wrong, but the consequences are not in the picture. There are 2 elements to what happened: "Wander made the wrong call and many wrong decisions, AND many people died/lost their homes because of his decisions". The show only talks about the first part. It almost makes it look like if Dominator actually agreed to become friends, everything else would become okay.
Every time I rewatched the show I was thinking "Oh, yeah, this guy let countless people die because he wanted to solve the situation 100% ethically and gets away with it. Oh, he is very touchy without consent. Oh, he doesn't listen to his best friend and almost gets her killed. Oh, oh. Fuck this guy".
Now I think that it would be fine if it was adressed. There is no need to reduce/ignore his mistakes. Half of the main cast are villains (I personally consider (Wander, Sylvia, Hater and Peepers the main 4, people still love them. I love them! Not only that, we have Brad Starlight that satirises traditional heroes. Why doesn't the show apply at least some critical thinking towards Wander? Also, Sylvia is a hero too! She was a bounty hunter, she has anger management problems (where she is implied to hurt people in the way that a family friendly show can show (ep about the race)), she often "learns her lesson" if Wander is right.
Another thing.
Episodes where Wander is wrong are weirdly disconnected from the rest of the show in my opinion. At least it feels like it. It feels like tonal whiplash. One episode, Wander does something wrong - it's fine/haha funny. Other episode, Wander is W R O N G and needs to learn his lesson, also everything is extremely more on the nose. Try watching "The Fremergency Fronfract" right after "The Helper". Throughout 8 years I saw several people that had an opinion that these episodes felt really out of character for Wander, and I can understand where they are coming from. In my opinion, it's not Wander as a character, it's the lens through which we see him. Swapping from uncritical acceptance to critique feels unnatural to me.
Thinking of alternative scenarios/fanfiction makes me like Wander so much more. I think I can actually appreciate the guy so much more now. Everything I wrote was prompted by RWBY (+rewritten), because main team has the same problems Wander has times 1000.
I do hope that in season 3 they planned to explore Wander more (I remember seeing some tweets about it being the case), but I think that there is no way to adress this in season 3 without making it disconnect in many ways in some way from season 1 and 2.
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A lot of this could already be known, but I'm having fun and its a way to keep track. All is from thisisnotawebsitedotcom.com
So for computer passwords:
Dipper- a letter from Bill (his handwriting + he calls him Pine Tree) telling dipper to stare into the sun
Mabel- Places stickers all over the lab until the screen says "lab fully Mabelized"
Stanford/Sixer- Gives a Medical report on Ford's hand taken at 18, the report censors the mention of kidnapping him for cloning
Stanley- eBay for brass knuckles
MatPat- a video of MatPat saying "hello internet, this time, you're on your own"
Cipher/Bill Cipher- Eye of Providence Wiki
Bill- Sesame Street Video
Wendy- A letter from Wendy saying that she wrote a way to ward off evil triangles at the bottom right of the book (I have two ideas for what this could be), also a 👌 drawn in the bottom right corner upside down.
Blind Eye- A seeing eye test that repeats the letters WKHBOOVHH (anagram maybe?) with a colour code at the bottom (I'll include this later in this post)
Robbie- Shows messenger messages between Robbie and Thompson. Thompson seems to be getting real tired of the bullying (He wrote out "If you keep insulting me one of these days I-" and then highlights it as if he's about to delete it, followed by Yea :(). They discuss going to a site to see Bill, and later freak out about seeing him and knowing how they both die (Thompson gets mistaken for luggage and Robbie chokes on a mini skateboard). The end is this photo with Bill in the background:
Pacifica- A letter from Pacifica herself warning against Bill, saying that she dumped old Tapestries with triangles on it off a yacht with an unnamed friend. She seems to be super uncomfy about mentioning who the friend is (Dipper maybe?). She ends the letter saying that you should follow her on Platinum Paz
Platinum Paz: Details a story of Pacifica having a nightmare about blood being on her hands and everywhere. She then has a conversation with a statue of Nathaniel NW, who asks about her anger. She tells him everything was better before the Pines' came to town, and he says he will help her if she does something for him: go to the Pines' place and grab a small snowglobe that's new (the rift). He is about to shake her hand before she stops and wakes up. She then adds Dipper's number to her phone and sleeps well. Most likely what leads to the tapestries being thrown off a yacht.
Oneeyedking: a hypnosis tape where there is morse code in the background while Bill says "you want to sell your soul to Bill Cipher" three times. I didn't do this but the morse code gives a series of letters (explained below)
If you spam Stanley: you are a taken to something called “the Wheel of Shame” and it is Bill explaining that he knows all of Stan’s shames since he was in his head. They are listed as follows: Ex Wives, Fears, Secret Shames, Unreported Crimes, Stan’s Failed Products, Lowest Moments, Darkest Thought (pin all crimes on Soos), and How Stan Beat Me (He didn’t! I’M STILL HERE SUCKER)
Now for Codes:
When you click on the book of Bill, there is a letter from Ford to Dipper warning against the book. On the last page at the bottom right corner, this code is seen (this is what I thought Wendy might mean):
I tried all the existing codexes, but they didn't work. Until I typed MASON into the compuer (Dipper's acc name), which gives a sheet where Dipper talks about learning how to make codes. Ford's writing comes in at the end, and the words CRYPTOGRAM CODEX are capitalized at the end. When that was input into the computer, a folder file was downloaded and gave me multiple codes.
I used CypherFontA and flipped the message on the Vertical Axis and reversed the message to get: PER ASPERA AD ASTRA, which means "through suffering to the stars" in Latin
There is another hidden code on the candle, visible through the lightning, and it uses the Runes codex, translating to CURSED. When input into the computer, you get this "Just Say No" campaign poster against drawing triangles (RAD), the words Cool and Parties are both randomly capitalized in this speech bubble from Nancy Reagan (not applicable to the passwords tho)
Carved into the wall (visible when lightling strikes) on the left is the Latin phrase "VALLIS CINERIS", which translates to "valley of ashes", you get this image and a creepy voice that says "why did you do it?" (a reference to bill destroying his home dimension)
The morse code spells out NAITSUAF, and when input to the computer, gives an offer to sell your soul. At the bottom is a button that asks are you ready, when you click on it, it shows a contract that has the following code on it
This is also a codex given in the previously mentioned codex file, and it is the theraprism file. It states: "YOU ARE NOW TWENTY ONE GRAMS LIGHTER"
Below the theraprism is more CipherFontA code, which I have not fully completed but seems to list out the terms of the contract. However, I noticed these rectangles near the words and am wondering if it means to take the letter closest to it or if it is a period. I am too lazy to work it all out rn so feel free to lmk what that all says :)
When you sign the contract, it says "pleasure doing business with you" and the flame on the candle is now blue. When you mess with the toggle on the computer, you get a backwards audio message in the same creepy voice as the Vallis Cineris code. When reversed, the audio says: " Someone help, the murderer’s name is Bill”
The prism that sits beside the computer has a code with the following symbols: #?&&!, which reads out as SORRY (this code is in the Book of Bill). When you input that into the computer, you get an image of college Ford and McGucket :(
That’s all I have for now! Feel free to reblog with anything else you might have found! I know of a ton more but I didn’t include them since this post would NEVER end.
Ok. Let’s go over it once again, alright?
Peepers was standing there and started muttering after Sylvia stopped in her tracks and spoke up. Maybe coincidence, fine.
Then he started explaining plan to her despite ‘assuming’ she wasn’t joining him.
(Including ‘cool’ poses, mini Dominator stomping and whatnot, Peepers you’re such a show-off)
And his plan didn’t include what would happen to the bots that he clearly had to expect, since he knows what to expect on Dom’s ship plus there was this:
Ah yes, Peepers, you’re so unprepared, but wait!
He just randomly had golden gauntlets that would fit Sylvia and only Sylvia. Yup.
Tl;dr Peepers is so crazy prepared he had a plan to get Syl help him all along, perhaps it was even his plan A. No, you’re not going to convince me otherwise.
Via MohammedElKurd
Ahmad informed us that he will distribute Food & Urgent needs for Northen Gaza.
The situation is dangerous but Ahmad will try to reach the North Gaza, let's help Ahmad and reach the goal!
we only have less than 2 weeks, Please donate if you can and share 💜
https://x.com/learntoliberate/status/1762512518084534707?s=20
None of them can win this fight
Yes, Zim’s weapon of choice is GIR