#although if it's my account and you're gonna reblog it you can always tag it as hankcon

[iwonderwh0]

The day androids got taken away for deactivation, hundreds of kids with household androids cried themselves to sleep, mourning a family member.

They got attached. Hank too got attached.

Before today, he thought of the revolution as an overall positive event - something worth celebrating, or something he celebrated, at least. For him it symbolised change, a beginning of something better. It was only now that the true scale of the tragedy caught up with him, making him aware of how many android lives it actually cost. Only now it clicked with him how many of them were still mourned, and how, of all people, it was mostly kids who truly missed them.

Throughout December, he saw the memorials with old broken smartphones lined up in tight rows and columns, each for one killed android whose life was meaningful enough for someone to honour it with flowers and candles. And back then, he could never understand why were those flowers so crappy-looking and messy, mostly artificial or folded out of paper as origami. He used to wonder if it was another part of a symbolism - "artificial flowers for artificial people". Now it was obvious that the reason for that was much simpler: it was mostly kids who brought them. Most of them had no means to bring real flowers, so they folded them out of paper.

For the first time, Hank felt embarrassed for never having contributed anything to that memorial when it was still around. He should have brought some flowers, the real ones. Maybe he could even succeed in finding his old smartphone with dead battery and use it as a part of the memorial – if not for someone he personally knew, maybe for some of the deviants he saw last November, perhaps the one who killed himself in a holding cell. He didn't *know* him, didn't even consider him to be a person then, which, however, doesn't mean he could ever forget about him or his case. Arguably, he was the only person who kept thinking about him almost daily months after he died.

Hank didn't lose any close friends or family members the way others did that last November, though. The android he cared most about was still alive, now sitting right beside him on a passenger seat, waiting for Hank to start the engine, fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt. Hank noticed him always fiddling with something, be it a small object or his own clothes that he kept adjusting even if it was perfectly fine the way it was before. He would rub his palms together as if struggling to keep them warm or other times he'd tap the table or other surface he had around with his fingers in some irregular rhythmic patterns that Hank sometimes wondered was originated from some songs he happened to hear, maybe even among those Hank played in his presence himself.

Fiddling was one of those things Connor always did, even before turning deviant. Something so human yet small enough to be completely ignored, or, like in Hank's case, only think of it as something, android did to annoy him personally. How come he never gave it a second thought back then, never wondered why those completely pointless actions were even there? Would it change anything if he did? Would it provided him with enough evidence to answer his question before he had a chance to ask it with a gun? He wished the answers to all those questions were 'yes', and yet it was only now, months later that he actually paid attention to Connor doing any of that and questioned why. Why did he fail to see the significance of it earlier?

As he pondered that, Connor crossed his hands over his chest, deep in thought, while his fingers tapped out a rhythm on his left sleeve. Was he even aware of doing that?

Suddenly Hank felt the urge to touch him. Confirm his presence, and remind him of his own. It took a conscious effort to suppress that urge. Instead Hank cleared his throat and said.

"I remember when kids wanted to become pop stars or video bloggers. Never occurred to me that some kids today might want to be androids."

Connor stopped the tapping and eyed him.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know... It's just weird. That's all."

Connor shifted in his seat, turning to face Hank.

"Who did you want to become?" he asked, "As a kid."

"Not a police lieutenant, that's for sure."

"That's not the answer to the question I asked."

"And you're gonna make it my problem."

Hank could almost feel being scanned as android tilted his head slightly.

"Am I bothering you?"

"Always."

Connor grinned at him, and Hank felt the corners of his own mouth rising as well at the sight.

[red-man-of-mustache]

Namedropping

Hey everyone! We're gonna take a little detour today/tonight to talk about something that's happened between me and someone you might know at @askwendyokoopa. I labored with this because in all my time being on/off tumblr I've never had to make such a post as this. Usually, if I block someone or someone blocks me we both move on like normal people. In this case though, I was appraised of the habits of this person along with my own experience with them and I proceeded with a block only to be met with them hopping on another account to blatantly get around said block then, when I refused to engage further they name-dropped me. Here's the post in question I'll be addressing throughout.

But, let's begin shall we? I'll start by talking about me. This'll be a long read and I know I'm asking a lot but please read it in full if you interact with his person.

I hope I've tagged this appropriately, if I haven't let me know. I'll also be reblogging this for the day crowd.

My blog is a safe place. I rp Mario as very campy, bright, and happy-go-lucky so I extend that to my general post pattern. I take my name and reputation quite seriously and as stated just a second ago I wrestled with making this post but I cannot let what they've said go uncontested. If you're reading this and you interact with them then this isn't me damning you or claiming I won't interact with you because of it but this is simply a cautionary tale. With that being said, for the more sensitive bits of proof, shoot me a DM or hit me up on discord(available upon request) and I can furnish you with even deeper details than I plan on going into in this post.

I have always avoided airing out my dirty laundry so to speak when it comes to any aspect of my life on this blog. Although it is "my" blog and I can post whatever I want, again, this is a place of uplifting and an escape. Rare is it when I'll post about how I struggle with certain things or if I feel dejected from a certain community and so on. I made a post a few months ago talking about my substance abuse and how I overcame it. In that same post I spoke about my mom, her alcoholism, and how she injured me in an altercation we had. I did that to be open because these same struggles have impacted my time on here. I was heavily self-medicating during my last run on tumblr and although I was present it was because I literally wished I didn't exist at the time. It all culminated into last year, spilling into this year. You can read that post for that information. I won't entirely retread that ground here.

It's a heavy subject and it's a dark contrast to what I usually post but I did so in case anyone could take strength from knowing I made it through a major struggle such as that.

Now this is a post about @askwendyokoopa,whom we'll refer to as Wendy for the rest of this post, why am I talking about me first? Well, once again, I've never blocked someone and seen them 1. try to circumvent the block with another account(one that perpetrates what I've come to have an issue with on them, more on that later) and 2. have that same person namedrop me for that block as if I need to convince them I don't wish to speak with them anymore.

Yes, I did.

Truly this song & dance is new to me. Again, I take my name(url) very seriously so to call me out as if I've done something wrong to you for not wanting to speak to you?? That's my right, you can't play victim just because I didn't give you a college thesis. This is the internet, if I don't wanna communicate with you I just won't.

I don't make vague posts about people I don't like, nor do I vaguely allude to me going through a tough time(at least I try not to, if I have those incidents are few and far between) I'll outright say I'm not feeling it or something along those lines but even then I have to be going through hell to make such a post. I also refuse to put it on my moots and followers when I feel inadequate because I'm here to lift you up not the other way around. If you choose to drop a compliment on my writing or personality, great! I deeply appreciate it and it motivates me to keep going but I'm here to give a boost to everyone around me through Mario. He's been with me since I was a kid and always a figure of inspiration in how he faces down trouble. I could use a bit of that in my adult life. I just wanna share that with everyone else.

I've actually been sort of a monolith my whole time on Tumblr and you know what? It's gotten me into a lot of trouble I can't lie. I'm doing my best to break that pattern by being upfront with how I feel, speaking to people more even if it's just to say "Hey I like your blog" or something simple along those lines. How can I claim to wanna provide a morale boost to people if I'm as reclusive as I (still) am? Doesn't make sense which is why I've been moving to change it.

This is not to name me a victim by the way. All this person did was namedrop me and mildly annoy me/make me uncomfortable but I've spoken with actual victims of their harassment and that was actually the last straw. So if anything I'm getting off light, I'm only doing this to clear my side of things and provide clarity for why this is happening.

I met Wendy way back in the infancy of my old @red-man-of-archive blog which I'm sure is obvious that it was the same URL you see me using now when it was active. Things were casual but consistent. IC Wendy had a crush on Mario but he usually never reciprocated and just moved on. Was it harassment back then? No. We didn't talk OOC and kept things "business" as I'll call it. They were amicable and their portrayal was pretty accurate in my opinion of course. Nothing funny going on to my knowledge.

Fast forward to me going through the various issues I did, being unable to even keep up with basic blog activity, and then going on extended hiatus. I tried coming back but had lost my phone number by then due to financial reasons and I decided this was the chance I needed to start over. So I did! I remade the blog September of 2018, archived the old one since I was still somehow logged in on my phone at the time and moved on. I don't think Wendy was around when I started over but they did come around. And to clarify: it still wasn't harassment. Things were casual, when threads ended they didn't have a foul word to say.

I end up dropping out again from tumblr, still in the storm that is my life. Not even a full month later either. I'd pop in for spurts of activity but it never lasted. Didn't see hide or hair of Wendy during this period.

Then we arrive at this year. Nearly three years after my last posting. I had quit smoking(THC) completely, I'm on the uptick in my job/finances, and I'm seeing a therapist. Took a look back and I've been reclusive, posting from my little cave this whole time and I came to the realization that if I want any staying power I need to put more of me out there alongside Mario. So, I start approaching people OOC more and trying to be forthcoming in where our threads are going or if I'm liking/disliking something.

Coming back to Wendy. When I got back so-to-speak I went through my followers to see if anyone was still active. Three years is a long time after all. I came across her again: Wendy. I looked at the timestamps, saw how far back they'd posted but they were among the people I felt comfortable enough to message despite the inactivity. Ironic.

Now, I can't show chat messages between us because when I blocked them the messages were nuked. I don't feel like attempting an unblocking to revive it but I'm about 90% sure they can see my posts anyway. Bear with me a little longer on this narration.

They get back to me after a bit and we start chopping it up. We catch up and I'll be 100% transparent in saying yes I did go along with everything being suggested. We started an entire thread based off innuendo but it was quite ham-fisted and when I stopped replying they began to pester me "Did I do something wrong? Can you not find another acronym?" even going so far as to start interacting with me through a different post and asking in character why I didn't reply.

That thread and the in character incident are gone unfortunately as I deleted them. But, I've got more than that to share. Innuendo isn't inherently bad nor does it go outside of what I do here as Mario.

By this point my patience has been tested and I realize this isn't the same amicable person I used to deal with. I can't speak for others OOC but I will say they hijack posts very often to ramble in character with this self-referential tone that makes it quite obvious this isn't Wendy(the character) speaking but the mun or simply turn things inappropriate. A few examples, we got

Just bizarre, plus it's AI

Again, weird, but not a blockable offense. They've at least put the bare minimum of effort in to tag it, I guess right? Well, around the time the gears were turning regarding this person's odd and pushy behavior there was someone within a server I've joined who made an announcement about them given they've had experience with this person. Unfortunate experience it seems.

They detailed a lot of things as did a few other moots of mine but one thing in particular stuck out to me. They claimed that this particular person used a whole host of other blogs to stalk/harass them. Then I remember this post.

Wait a second... going to their profile proper we see

Then if we hover over Pom Pom we see

So, not only do they have a laundry list of accounts at their disposal but they use them to circumvent blocks, and then will talk to themselves using these same accounts.

I don't wanna associate with someone like this. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, if I haven't convinced you yet, contact me through tumblr DM's or discord and I can let you know what else I know because their rap sheet is longer than their muse list.

They mass follow people within communities they're active in and even if you block this main blog, they could be on your follower list and you don't even know it. Thusly, I am going to suggest you block this person and their list of alternative blogs, and move on. If I still haven't convinced you, once again hit me up privately because I've got more personal stuff to share that doesn't belong here per se.

I don't wanna see this person victimize other people and that's why I took the time to put out this warning. All that talk earlier from me about "uplifting people" but I'm making a callout post right? Well, once again, I didn't want to originally because I thought I could just move on. But, this is a chronic pattern of behavior exhibited by this person and I don't wanna see them victimize someone else. If me blocking them didn't get them up in arms enough to namedrop me and play the victim themselves we wouldn't be here. Plus, I wasn't the only person addressed in their little callout post.

So, that's the scoop on why I blocked askwendyokoopa and why I believe you should too. They are not worth your time or energy.

The rabbit hole goes deeper but I've rambled long enough.

My discord is available upon request if you'd like to discuss things further. This will be my first and last time addressing them/this situation publicly. I don't do drama and in a month it'll be ten years since I started posting on tumblr. This has never happened to me before and I'd like to keep it that way.

Thank you.

[marengogo]

https://www.tumblr.com/marengogo/739886505084993536/it-is-a-very-very-very-basic-and-simple-thing?source=share

"why are you here if you think you're right" because i saw you saying that "Imagine if i have to check every acct i post from......" Thing where you directly indirectly said some people who think like this ain't gonna survive if jkk turned out to be not dating so i replied cause I'm a jkkr and no i don't think they're dating and i also do think tae should have double checked the acct before reposting. So i thought blogs are where you have discussions even when you're not agreeing to things so i did that but just got to know that you're supposed to block and scroll down.

"the problem is is that the account is shipper account and no one's ready to have that conversation" for some people it might be like that but since you replied to my ask saying this let me clear this that i don't care if he's posting from shipper acct or any kind of acct my problem is that is anti and now unintentionally it got 42k around followers space where people belive he posted it after checking the acct so now they have all the rights to continue their hate. Yes he's not responsible for what people think but he's responsible for what he posts. Media training is there for a reason if he had time to check his name tag I'm sure more 10 sec wouldn't have caused much problem. You said one scroll always don't tell you about the acct which i agree and i would have been fine again if those anti posts were down the page i would have assumed he didn't scroll that down and it's fine but ths posts are up there so in this case 10 sec would have been enough.

I hate it when people thinks that just because we're pointing out something it's gotta have something to do with "shipping" when we don't care about it that's why i replied.

That's all i wanted to clear although i do have things to say but it's waste of time so it's agree to disagree situation.

One more thing for @/chikoritajjk, i ain't reading all of that as i have zero interest in knowing what they think since i didn't go to their blog but thanks for taking your time.

Hi Anon,

I’m going to reply point by point, when I get a second (most likely tomorrow), but in the meantime if you could please clarify this for me:

Media training is there for a reason if he had time to check his name tag I'm sure more 10 sec wouldn't have caused much problem

What do you think that is, what are the tell tell signs he should have picked upon, how did his media team train him to pick up on this signs, what are other famous examples of media training etc etc… Because it feels like you and I have a very set idea of how this works and before I reply and assume stuff, it would be great if you could clarify.

Thanks!

Marengo

PS - Also, was the Artichikoo comment necessary? Common, you know better! You want a world where JM doesn’t have antis yet you come to my public blog, where ANYONE can reblog, and start behaving confrontational as if they didn’t have the right to reblog and express their opinion, is not like they asked you to reply, did they? ... sometimes ignoring IS the answer. People, everyone, you, me, etc, WE ALL need to understand how things work, in general, because “if you can’t stand the heat…”. Once again, I repeat this is a PUBLIC BLOG📢, so you are ALL subject to the public’s answers and opinions.

The moment you sent your ask, with the tone you chose, you instantly decided the type of replies you were going to get. Had you sent a “I want to discuss this topic” type of post, we would have discussed. You sent a “stop accusing me/us of yadda yadda … he should have yadda yadda” type of post, so I am replying to the yadda yadda. Makes sense no?

It really takes nothing to not be confrontational behind a keyboard, when you are put on the spot IRL, it is difficult, I can understand. That aside, I am assuming your main goal is to “protect” JM right? Antagonising one of those people who loves him more than life itself, doesn’t seem to be the way to go about it.

PPS - sorry to all my other Anons, this person has points I need to make so I really want to address them 🙏🏾

[tau1tvec]

your last anon got me thinking. notes absolutely matter so how do some people get 800 notes for one pic that was just taken in cas or smth? because it gets reblogged by big bloggers theres only like a few but they could post their sims thumb and everyone reblogs it. we participate in the culture you were talking about with anon if that makes any sense.

I reread the ask, and there wasn't a single mention of notes in there, unless you're referring to another ask, but like, lemme be 110% blunt here... bc I've always found this kinda fascinating when I see other ppl bring it up.

Ppl like pretty, cute and cool shit. Like have you seen how humans react when a kitten meows, they fucking lose their minds, if the sims in the cas pics got 800 notes, it's probably bc they're pretty, cute, or cool looking. Now are there times that society tends to skew what we find pretty, cute or cool looking that could be detrimental to others, yeah, but I'll admit it, I too enjoy an occasional sim with big goobery eyes, and a colorful outfit, it reminds of Animal Crossing, and I like Animal Crossing.

Followers. Some accounts got a lotta them, that means a lot more people will see their content, which means a lot more people will probably like it too. Though seeing as this is tumblr, and bots and lurker accounts are a thing, there will likely still be an offset in follower count to note count. I've got about 3,000 rn, and I average about 50-100 notes without reblogs, but can pull more of it does get reblogged.

Friends. Believe it or not, interacting with other humans will draw other humans to interact with you and your content, that's kind of a given, although if you don't want to do all that, you could always just learn to make really bomb ass CC, and let that draw followers in to look at your non-cc content, but I'm gonna be honest, even that isn't guaranteed. I've seen plenty of cc creators post about how they feel people only interact with their cc posts, and never their other stuff.

Social Media is a slot machine. Really when it comes down to it, it's luck, posting the right thing at the right time, yet never knowing when that'll be, this is also why ppl do time-zone reblogs. I ran a side-blog that was just my other gaming content, and it was like crickets for years, until Until Dawn was released, and I just happened to jump at buying it that day. I was posting content for it as it was at the height of its popularity. This meant more eyes scrolling the tags, which meant more thumbs to possibly like my posts. Timing and patience is so important on social media, especially when you're throwing content into a void. There were a lotta ppl getting hella notes when the infants dropped, bc it was this huge thing a lot of ppl were excited for, even ppl who don't consider themselves a simblr... but the hype only lasts so long, esp these days, and you've probably noticed lately things have kinda slowed down for a lotta ppl, but that's alright, the real ones always stick around, let's take a moment to appreciate them.

Sometimes you just gotta hype up your own shit. Idk, I learned this from a YouTuber, so take it with a grain of salt, but when they began actively reminding ppl to like, and subscribe, and began hyping up their upcoming content and streams, it helped engagement a lot. Ppl are drawn to positive ppl, it's just more fun for everyone.

This shit isn't magic, there's always a pretty logical reason why these posts get hella notes whether you agree with why or not, just like how there are posts that don't get hella notes that absolutely deserve more, whether you agree with why or not.

[baltears]

hello spookyshai!! its cool if u dont want to, but i was wonderin if you'd elaborate on what you like about william? i just like thinking about/mentally rewriting westworld and its characters in my free time, and your fascination with william's got me fascinated, mostly bc i see him as a stinky bastard. so obvs you'd definitely have a more nuanced take on him, which i'd also like to develop for the imaginary westworld rewrite fic that i'm never going to write ;)) regardless if u answer or not, just wanted to say i'm a fan of your blog and i hope you're havin a good day!!

omg so first of all thank you so so much for sending this, especially asking unprompted about a character you don't even like and giving me a chance to explain my feelings about him which is just incredibly cool of you. i love and am obsessed with william so giving me any excuse to talk about him at length is like gifting me $1000. if you want to know more about my meta thoughts about him after reading this, (I'm gonna talk A Lot – sorry – but i can't possibly get through everything because he's just a very complicated guy and it's a very dense show), you can always look in my william tag. I have a lot of text posts about him, but I also often talk a lot in the tags of my own posts as well as reblogs. This is gonna be a lot of totally disorganized and unedited infodumping of a lot of different meta, but i've talked about all of it at length elsewhere too and I can also totally elaborate more if you have any specific questions (you could send another ask if you wanted, but also feel free to just message me about it anytime). I'll do my best not to get too emotional (lol) but it'll be tough because this character is so close to my heart. but I'll try!

this is a huge wall of text lol so i'll also be adding more bold and italics than i normally would just to make it a little easier to read.

so first of all let's be clear, he completely is a stinky bastard. he is a horrible, awful, faithless, pathetic specimen of a man. not liking him is totally justified. just wanted to get that out of the way. personally I think not liking anything for any reason is totally valid and justified, but there are certainly good reasons why a lot of people don't like william. he is not a good dude, at least not after a certain point. No one is obligated to relate to him, empathize with him, feel bad for him, whatever... like, no one's obligated to like anything, but especially this guy. sometimes people can get a little shirty about the fact that i do, like me liking him means i think they have to. I don't think that. I do love finding other william stans, and i am very unapologetic and open about my love for him, but him being widely hated makes complete sense to me.

sigh like why i love him so much though… it's kind of hard to even put into words. on one level it's just extremely personal, like, there are a lot of things about him that i really resonate with and identify with, although I know that sounds weird (it's definitely gotten some very shocked reactions before, lol). i'm a villain liker in general, i tend to be able to relate to those types of characters easily and it kind of takes a lot for me to really dislike one on a personal level (though that's true of any sort of character, i just tend to like the majority of the characters in any work that i genuinely enjoy regardless of how shitty they are – to me the only truly bad thing a character can be is annoying, like, the kind of annoying where you just want them off your screen). Characters being any degree of evil or shitty or problematic doesn't bug me at all, personally, I tend to feel no deep internal urge to have them 'held accountable' for the things they do, unless they exist in a narrative that genuinely doesn't seem to understand that they are in the wrong, which does irritate me when it happens. But anyway, I don't want to get too oversharey but there's definitely a very high level of just personal resonance to the character for me in terms of the kinds of conflicts he has, the things he struggles with, the dominant emotions of his life, etc. so that's part of it. also though he's just… a very complex and beautifully constructed piece of character work, so I also love him just on a technical level as a writer.

He has such incredible significance in the story too, being the thematic representative of humanity, both to dolores and to the wider narrative – his capabilities for good and evil are humanity's capabilities for good and evil, right. Dolores' opinion of humanity and feelings towards humanity are very colored by her opinion of him and her feelings towards him, and thematically their relationship is sort of a microcosm of the broader relationship between hosts and humanity and very much a central piece of the narrative. Even when it's out of direct focus it's being constantly referenced and pointed back to, such as with the caleb storyline in season 3 – caleb himself is basically one big callback to william in s3, parallels out the wazoo, and his function of turning around dolores' opinion on humans is very much related to him reminding her of william – hence why her storyline in season 3 ends with her remarking on how her memories of william as a young man indicate to her that humanity is capable of goodness, because caleb's capacity to choose echoes william's capacity to choose, caleb's goodness echoes william's goodness, it all goes back to that, etc.

So… I guess I'll just jump in lol. William's Thing, the fulcrum of his character, the main feeling or sentiment that underlies all of his evil actions and kind of his general turn away from the kind and gentle person he used to be, is alienation, right. He lives his whole life (as he tells dolores in 1x07) not fitting in anywhere, not making connections anywhere, not having any sort of community or any experience with love or companionship of any kind… he's just been totally alone and alienated his entire life. like, the closest thing he had to a friend was logan, and he hates logan. I think this is the major thing people miss about him – there's this perception that his turning evil was out of some form of entitlement, that he was just angry that this woman he liked didn't like him back and it's just an issue of wounded masculinity, but to me that completely misses the mark. Like yes wounded masculinity is a piece of his character (the way he performs and weaponizes masculinity in general is… really fascinating, I'll go into a bit more detail about it, but the kind of showy machismo that he displays is definitely a tool that he intentionally developed for his own use rather than a really integral part of who he is) but it's not at all the core emotion happening there.

To William, Dolores was not only a person he was in love with or a person he was attracted to. She was also his first and only genuine human connection ever. She was his first true friend, she was his first love, she was the first suggestion anywhere in his life that it was even possible at all for him to experience a sort of deep mutual understanding and care, that somebody could actually genuinely see him and let him see them. He literally just had not ever experienced any level of real emotional intimacy before, which is a feeling i actually think a lot of people relate to if they grew up feeling very lonely. And then ultimately not only was that relationship taken away, but it was kind of retroactively deleted. When he saw her again back in sweetwater, his thought was not, "i don't have this relationship anymore," but "i never had this relationship," and further, "the single person i've ever thought i could have this kind of relationship with is actually not capable of having any kind of relationship with anyone, including me, and i literally just made all of this up in my head." After losing Dolores he is not just sad and lonely – he literally comes to the conclusion that he can never have any kind of intimate human connection or be genuinely loved, ever, because the one person in his entire life he thought he connected with is not even a person at all, but just a thing. It's very much a rug pull moment on a level that's hard to describe, it kind of takes some thought-experimenting to get to that emotional place because it's a level of shock and hurt and betrayal and like, paradigm-shifting that most of us don't regularly experience (which I think might be part of the reason why a lot of people don't seem to really understand his character or be able to parse what's going on with him emotionally). Suffice it to say it's a wound deep enough that he was pretty much never going to recover from it.

After that happens he is completely destabilized, he loses all sense of meaning and self, and he never gets a grip on it again. He had totally reconstructed his idea of his life to include the genuine possibility of meaning, and meaningful relationships, when he met Dolores. And with the loss of her, all of that suddenly went away and he basically was just left with nothing. So that alienation that he grew up with is now not just a part of his life, not just a thing that he suffers from, but he starts to feel that it's inherent to him and that it comes from him, which is partly why we start getting all the anti-social behavior he displays later in life. He develops and kind of fosters that lack of empathy in himself not because he's truly incapable of empathy (as we see when he's a young man and at a couple of later points here and there, he is in fact very capable of it) but because he feels fundamentally cut off from other people – he can't reach them and they can't reach him.

So that fundamental sense of alienation is really what informs 90% of the things he does after that point. He starts building this persona, inside and outside the park. The real world feels meaningless to him at this point because the only hint of meaning he's ever had in his life was in the park, so he buys the park, and simultaneously starts trying to "win" at life in the real world like he would in the park. The real world honestly doesn't feel any more real to him than the park does, he just knows rationally that it's different and so he behaves differently outside the park… he builds all this wealth and power for himself, he becomes a famous philanthropist. Inside the park he starts creating this character for himself, this sort of hyper-masculine, hyper-competent, totally emotionally composed, merciless, badass villain. And he makes a very concerted effort to stay in this persona as often as he can.

It's all a performance, though, right. As early as 1x05 we have Ford pointing out (to his face! legend) that his barely-hidden desperation to find meaning in the park is giving the game away. In that flashback near the end of 2x02 we get a glimpse of what's underneath, because he's performing this cold, heartless persona in front of Dolores literally while his voice is shaking because he's having to try hard not to start crying as he's talking to her. Deep down he is still very wounded, he still loves her, he still desperately wishes deep down (as jimmi simpson explained) for her to just tell him that all of it was real, for her to be real and truly be a person the way he thought she was. When he's an older man that wish is still in there, it's just been buried very deep, covered up with a lot of other things, twisted. But it's always there, it's his most closely held desire, the only thing he truly wants, and it comes out all the time in the things he does. All his tormenting of dolores, and especially his desire to make the park "real" in order to find meaning – that's that. That sense of deep confusion that's always there in his character too, the constant inner monologue of "who am I, what does this mean, does anything mean anything, what is real or not real, what is going on," that's that too, that's his destabilized sense of self and reality and meaning that came out of losing Dolores. And by this point he has also come to feel, as he says in 2x09 to his wife, that there is something very fundamentally wrong with him, in a way that's kind of at odds with how we as the audience have historically understood him.

The thing is, we saw him be a kind, loving, gentle, thoughtful person. He certainly was not perfect, for instance his later narcissism started out as a sort of basic self-centeredness, but he was a fundamentally good-hearted person who put most of his energy into trying to do the right thing. But he starts saying that he feels like that wasn't the real him, that he thinks deep down he was evil and poisonous all along, that his turn to darkness was inevitable, and that there's a sort of helplessness to his evil. There's this deep sense of shame that permeates his character along with his loneliness and alienation and resentment. He hates everything, he hates the world, but above all he hates himself – kind of amusing considering the god complex he's developed over time. But that really does seem to be the underlying emotion, that he truly thinks that deep down he was always bad. It's very heavily implied that his philanthropy outside the park and his attention to his family, his kind of good-guy persona, is something that he constructed to try and make up for his true nature, and all but stated that he doesn't feel like he's succeeded. To him, no amount of good he does will ever balance his level of evil, evil that as he says doesn't come from anything he's done but something deeper than that, something immutable, something he is. So that's why we eventually have him getting to the point of going "I might as well not bother with this anymore. I might as well just be evil, because I can't change what I am."

I've also said in other posts that the things Juliet says to him come off as obviously abusive. Like, she's technically correct that there's some sinister things going on with his private life, but listen to how she says it. You're a virus, not a person, a thing that mindlessly infects and destroys and has no other purpose. And he agrees with her! He doesn't question it at all, he just says, yes, you're exactly right, I'm not a human being with good and bad attributes, or potential to do both right and wrong. I'm a virus. Like, again, I know people get weird about having empathy for villain characters, there's the whole "cool motive, still murder," thing, because we don't want to be excusing anyone's bad actions with a sad backstory (personally I don't really care, but I understand where the concern comes from). But when he said that to Juliet it just… like I don't know how else to put it, it broke my heart. He really believes that about himself. And later he starts to question it because he's not sure anymore if he actually chose to do any of the things he did… but the way his hallucination of Emily puts it, these are his two options: you are evil, or you had no choice. One or the other. He never puts aside the idea that he is a monster that does not deserve to live, and his suicidality persists from season one (when he encourages Dolores to shoot him in the head and reacts with honest disappointment when she can't) to the end of season four when he actually does manage to engineer his own death. He is deeply, agonizingly, pathetically miserable existing the way that he is, he seems to see his even being allowed to live at all as some sort of cosmic injustice. But he doesn't know how to change back to the way he was.

All that having happened, though, we also keep getting these repeated suggestions in the story that he actually is still capable of goodness somewhere in there. The narrative keeps asking what William is exactly, what his fundamental nature is, and keeps refusing to land on one answer, instead choosing to keep things ambiguous in a way that would be sort of odd for your garden variety villain. In 2x04 we see him experiencing regret, feeling empathy and pain on behalf of others, and acting genuinely heroic, only to later backtrack and say it didn't mean anything. In 2x09 Emily tells him he is in his essence "a lie" but makes no attempt to locate what the "truth" of him would then be. In 3x06 he tries to figure out the answer to what's going on with him again only to decide he still doesn't really know, in 3x08 we get this reminder that he still stands for Dolores as a representation of both humanity's evil and its goodness, in 4x05 when his host duplicate asks him what he is, he says "Jury's still out." He is too far down his current path to turn back, but he still does not and cannot definitively and finally choose evil, because despite his self-loathing it seems like he senses deep down that his other side is still in there. All that to say I think he's getting a redemption arc in season 5, if we get a season 5 – season 5 is supposed to be the do-over season, and the character who most desperately needs and could most benefit from a do-over is William.

Um, closing thoughts… I think he's really funny. Sometimes intentionally, like, I do laugh at his little quippy comments, but I also just think it's really funny how pathetic he is and what a mess he is and how he basically imploded his entire life on accident. I do feel a lot of very genuine care and empathy for him (obviously), but he's also such a garbage fire of a human being that you sometimes just have to laugh. He's just my funny little guy, also he sucks, also I love him and he's my lil angel, also he's the worst man ever in history and deserves to be drawn and quartered (said with love). You get it. :) There's dimensions.

Trying to think of other characterization notes for your imaginary fic… oh, did you notice he puts on an accent in the park? He does this fake Southern drawl when he's playing his park character, but it's not his real accent and he drops it at other times, kind of like how Dolores sometimes does or doesn't use her "rancher's daughter" accent when she's being Wyatt in season 2. Uh… Total nerd, at heart, seeing as "all he had as a kid were books." (I kind of suspect that childhood memory might not have been totally real, by the way… made a post about that recently that's a little ways down in my tag if you're interested.)

There are more things I could say, but I think I've probably gone on long enough for the one ask lol so I'll cut it off here. Thank you again, so much, for sending this. I hope you enjoyed and got something out of this response, but if not I still do very much appreciate you asking and being curious. I hope you had a great day too!