#and slime's 180 into killing both purpled and q doesnt make any fucking sense

[freyfall]

yknow I was also going to mention the specific differences between LN4 and LN5 and how that affects your reading of the canon but i forgot to before I hit post. also that's a huge can of worms. but I'm gonna open it

so LN4 spends its ENTIRE story setting up for change. it sets up quackity and slime's relationship with slime asking questions and poking holes in quackity's logic, with quackity beginning to falter, building a friendship and trust between quackity and slime, and then giving quackity consequences to his earlier actions - the very thing that'd been building the entire time. (I constantly think about the "is it worth it? revenge?" "no." interaction in this context.)

LN4 ends with quackity mourning the loss of slime, loss of the friend that was questioning him and encouraging that self reflection, he hasn't just lost power anymore, he's lost love, he's lost friendship. this is reinforced by LN4 including the big fiancés blowup RIGHT before having purpled kill slime, too. LN4 is the big lore stream of "quackity's consequences." this is quackity's rock bottom. the ending is hopeful and bittersweet, "in life or in possible death, know that I will fulfill our legacy." personally, I think that this implies that quackity will take the lessons that slime taught him (which weren't, like, overtly said - but you have to take into account what the questioning and pushback against q's logic meant) and, eventually, change.

on the other hand, LN5's core message is that quackity hasn't changed. it shows that no one on the DSMP has changed, that everyone is going to continue this cycle of power seeking and revenge forever and ever. quackity takes exactly none of the lessons that were given to him. he builds a whole slime army, dream and punz and purpled come to seek revenge, and it absolutely blows up in his face. slime takes an entire 180 and comes to kill both purpled and quackity. everyone is focused on revenge, AND AGAIN it ends with quackity not learning any lessons and doubling down on las nevadas and how it will rise even so.

SO. the question becomes: do you ascribe by the message of LN4, or the message of LN5? if you ascribe by LN4, you're much more likely to be favorable to romantic interpretations of qsicle. (again, "in life or in possible death, know that I will fulfill our legacy." if I put the shipping goggles on for a moment it's like oh wow that's gay asf.) And then I find that those who ascribe by LN5 tend to have more negative interpretations of dapduo in general. also like. slime literally kills him. don't think slime really wants to fulfill that legacy anymore LMAO.

so yeah! that's the ~extra meta~ about it.

saw a post the other day about how the dsmp fandom doesnt pay attention to any of quackity's relationships other than the romantic ones (also specifically shitting on quacksicle) and tbh while I think it's a valid point to talk about because quackity has so many other important relationships, you do realize that his romantic relationships (at least the arguably canon ones - specifically referring to fiances and schlackity though I guess you could argue tntduo but I'm personally not arguing that) like, completely inform a major part of his character?????????? It's about like. showing vulnerability to people and getting screwed over for it.

AND, perhaps the key part here, is that quackity and slimecicle follow in this pattern of quackity showing vulnerability to someone he has a close relationship with and then that relationship falling the fuck apart. so I don't know if it's necessarily off the mark to say that, in a sense, quacksicle was implied to be the same strain of relationship that q had with schlatt and karl and sapnap (and perhaps also wilbur) and that may or may not be romantic.

like, a platonic reading of it isn't incorrect (in fact it is probably the MORE correct version if I'm being realistic about cc intentions, etc) but like, the subtext isn't NOT there imo. Shrugs

anyways the op was right in that the entire other half of q's character is heavily informed by his nonromantic relationships - like. the entirety of LN (foolish, fundy, PURPLED) everything with the prison (sam, DREAM!) and also the friends he had in earlier dsmp days (tommy, eret, p sure bbh, this list can be added to but I wasn't a big early q watcher so this is all I got). (also, like, tntduo, but tntduo exists in the weird grey area yknow.)

anyways I love c!quackity and all of his relationships. they're all so fucking good