#dennis reynolds analysis

[a-nice-egg-offering]

Still so funny that the fandom somehow interpreted “Johnny doesn’t love you Johnny doesn’t even like you” as “I made up a persona to flirt with you because I’m in love with you” yall cray cray I love ya

Yeah of course it was weird and sexual bc everything with Dennis is weird and sexual he doesn’t know how to do things without making them weird and sexual but he’s literally like that with every single thing he does in every area of his life wbk that Dennis wants to fuck or has fucked Mac for years so idk why people randomly interpreted that one thing he did to Mac as him being in love with him when it was literally just another cruel manipulation game. And the saddest part is he was willing to let it go on for God knows how long he was willing to let this man that he supposedly “loves” according to yall stay being obsessed and in love with a man who he could never actually be with bc he doesn’t exist just in order to get mac out the apartment sometimes (literally so many easier and kinder ways of achieving that but that’s what Dennis is like he doesn’t get how to do things without making them a cruel game) and the only reason he revealed the truth was bc mac made the comment suggesting Johnny loves him and Dennis pride and ego couldn’t even let him have that. Why? He’s told Dee he loves her to manipulate her before why couldn’t he just let mac believe “Johnny” loves him just to keep the facade going longer? It was literally like in murder cases when the detectives get a detail wrong which leads to the murderer confessing to what actually happened simply bc they’re such narcissists and need to be acknowledged for what they actually did rather than a lie even if it means giving themselves away. So he was cruel enough to let mac fall for this false romance and then cruel enough to rip it away without warning just bc he couldn’t stand the thought of mac thinking he was in love with him even if it was just through a persona. I wish I could see what u guys see u know I love gay sex in the butt but every Johnny post I see I’m just like mmm that’s rly not what happened there. I’m not saying Dennis doesn’t have complicated feelings towards Mac I thought it was interesting that the CEO of tsuma looked like an older version of him (same hairstyle and Hawaiian shirt) and Dennis then literally ate his heart out. But the Johnny situation was imo weird and unnecessarily sexually charged but not at all indicative of anything romantic on Dennis’ end, he’s seduced plenty of people for his own gain, you gonna tell me he’s in love with Margaret mcpoyle now?

[a-nice-egg-offering]

Ok quick analysis of why Dennis has been so much meaner to Mac since he came out. As we know Dennis likes the abstract suggestion and implication of things much more than things being outright said in the open. He likes to complicate things because he revels in the grey area that allows him to have his cake and eat it too. For all these years Dennis thought mac knew that what went on between them was an unspoken understanding that as long as they both presented themselves as straight to the outside world they could be as gay as they wanted together while always having that safety net of being straight men that banged chicks to fall back on at any sign of suspicion. It’s not fun to him to be in a socially acceptable stable relationship, he has to interact with everyone around him like he’s playing a game, that’s how he gets off. Everything with Dennis is about it matters what you say not what you do. Dennis can know full well he’s raping women but he never says anything outright that would incriminate him and this is how he thinks he’s conquered the law and society. I think he’s disappointed in mac for coming out because it ruined the ambiguous relationship they had. Now that mac is openly gay and everyone knows it where’s the thrill of the chase & the danger? He feels like mac ruined their dynamic (bc Ofc he thinks about all of the gangs lives directly relating to him and does not consider or care that mac came out for his own personal acceptance and growth that had nothing to do with Dennis) Dennis feels like mac doesn’t get how to play the game (the game being life as Dennis sees it) and he immediately loses respect for people who don’t get it, we see the fact the people around him aren’t as cunning as him irritating him to the point where he staged a whole convention just to try and manipulate the gang into being smarter with their actions. So yeah I think Dennis has come to hate Mac bc he doesn’t respect him anymore now that he’s not as secretive as he used to be.

tfw your best pal who you’ve been gaying off with for 20+ years finally comes out and everything suddenly becomes painfully real

[macdenlover]

we don’t acknowledge enough how dee used to be a pageant winner when she was a kid and how much damage it did to her. she worked her ass off and got recognition for being pretty and talented at a young age and it was the only source of self esteem she could garner in a family that constantly berated and talked down to her. she sought after that external approval because it was the only way she could prove everyone around her wrong. her dream of being a performer didn’t come from a self-aggrandizing delusion— she genuinely showed a lot of potential when she was younger. but she went through an unflattering puberty and her spinal condition got worse and that natural talent she had as a kid plateaued way too early. the “former gifted kid” dilemma. she slowly lost the thing that promised her that she was good, but she was so desperate to keep holding onto it that she tried anyway. again and again and again no matter how much people made fun of her because it was always about proving them wrong. but after a while she couldn’t jump anymore without anticipating the way it feels when she hits the ground face first. self-sabotage became her way out, choosing to rather live in the fantasy of her own unrealized potential and blaming those around her for her lack of success, than having tried and crashed again. she’d rather buy lottery tickets over and over and never scratch off the numbers than to see that she lost. that self-sabotaging behavior bled into other aspects of her life too, from friendships to relationships to therapy. her own short lived success is what made her grow into embodying the cycle of failure.

[aanalytic]

sunny s17 wishlist:

- dee takes a goddamn W for once

- dee and the waitress hang out. or kiss

- charlie covered in dirt (or blood. or both)

- emotionally charged dennis moment please megan ganz i know you’re out there

- charlie and mac best pals/partners in crime type episode

[voncel]

Mac is literally the cleanest of the gang, I don’t care that they dropped his bossiness a bit in later seasons but he was still the one cleaning Charlie and Frank’s apartment in “Mac and Dennis break up”, so I’ll just take that scene as representative of his entire character from now on, thank you very much

But seriously, it makes sense. We’ve seen his mom, how she’s a mess alone (and his father wouldn’t make much of a difference if he was present). Lots of people that grow up in an uncaring and messy environment tend to grow up and take cleaningness very seriously. I speak from personal experience when I say I get anxious when I see a messy bedroom precisely because it brings me back to my early childhood. Mac took the role of “man of the house” very seriously after his father went to jail, it’s very evident his bossiness and need to take care of people came from that. He NEEDS Dennis to need him, because if he doesn’t, what’s preventing him from just leaving?

Speaking of Dennis, I wouldn’t describe him as clean like other people have. He’s not messy, he likes to have things organized, but only to the extent of his own willingness to clean. I actually think Dennis would be very laidback in general, he grew up with maids and butlers and never actually lived on his own. His college dorm must’ve been a hellsite, though the majority of dorms usually are. Mac cleans after Dennis, metaphorically and literally.

This then leads me to think a bit more about their living dynamics (though I dwelve into more headcanon-y territory) like how Dennis probably takes care of the money aspects (tbf Frank’s credit card takes care of it), Mac does grocery shopping because I think if Dennis did it, he’d come back with like 4 protein bars and some apples to last them the whole month. Mac totally cleans Dennis’ room, atleast in minor ways like dusting and taking out the trash, wile Dennis keeps their apartment tidy by decorating shelves or keeping things in their places. It’s a silent part of their living arrangement and the kind of thing they’d never trade off.

[charmac]

[prolibytherium]

Beautiful friendship

[ch4rliew0rk]

Dennis Reynolds is not a serial killer. in fact, he has never killed a single person. all of his fantasies of kiling are his way of mentally reclaiming power from someone who he feels has taken it from him, and he says incriminating things to make people think that he is unfeeling and dangerous and convince them not to cross him. (edit: or help him.)

as he says, Maureen is the only woman who can break his "shell", his protection. he feels like he was weak around her, so he needs to make everyone think he killed her as a way to reestablish his power over her in their minds, and to override their memory of him when he was in a relationship with her.

ha fantasizes about killing the news reporter because she is the only woman who makes him nervous (powerless), and once her boobs are ruined (the part that had value to him) he realizes what she's 'done' to him and needs to take his power back.

he wants people to think that he's capable of murder, just to scare them into submission. he acts like he wanted to actually kill the waitress in Mac is a serial killer because he needs Dee to keep following his orders. he says he likes being considered a serial killer when he asks charlie if he's "methodical" because he's trying to get charlie to follow his obviously flawed 'say yes' advice. he tells Dee to 'think of the smell' because he is in an argument with her where he needs to feel superior. love is a head in a freezer because then they can't leave, they cant hurt him, he is in control.

but in the end, he doesn't have the strength to kill pop pop.

I know that it sounds like I'm overlooking hard evidence of things that the character himself has said, but Dennis is a liar. he hates himself, so he starves himself and hurts people to prove that he's a golden god. all he wants is a loving relationship, which he has, so he acts like he doesn't need Mac (or anyone else for that matter). he tells mac that he has no feelings, only to reveal seasons later that he has big feelings, but he can't be seen as loving, caring, (weak). so he presents the anthrax, when it was always just sugar.

[dumpster-dory]

Dennis is such an interesting type of loser. He thinks he's good at manipulation, but he only successfully manipulates people who he sees as intellectually inferior (Mac&Charlie) or who have zero info about him and only fall for the manipulation for a short period of time.

And yet he's ALSO arguably the most PRONE to manipulation out of the gang. While Charlie and Mac are "dumber", Mac has a set of values and stands within them pretty firmly (relatively), and Charlie, despite being gullible, can be pretty assertive and cautious bc.. childhood trauma

And Dennis basically only needs an ego boost and he's fucking lost. He became a prostitute in like, what, two days?

[deeism]

the thing i've learned from extensively lurking on sunnyblr is that so many sunny fans are shockingly analytical and articulate and incredibly good at dissecting the material of the show—to the point where if you had never seen it before and you read a meta analysis from a fan you would be like wow. this show must be incredibly poignant and tragic. only to turn on an episode and be greeted immediately with a scene like this

[a-nice-egg-offering]

The way that Dennis and Dee are so similar and yet have nearly complete opposite personality types is so interesting and important to the fabric of the show no one else is an mbti/psychology buff like me so u probably don’t care but I’m gonna talk about it anyway. So Dennis is an ENTJ (if you break that down in the most basic of ways that’s extroverted, intuitive, thinking, judging but it’s actually a lot more complicated than that and I’m not going to go into it rn but u get the general gist) and Dee is an ESFP (Extroverted, sensing, feeling, perceiving) now in compatibility terms just with how you get along with the people in your life, the best matches are people with opposite first and last letters but the same middle two letters or opposite all letters but the same second letter so based on this Dennis and Dee couldn’t be more opposite unless one of them was an introverted type right so in theory they should clash in every way but here is when it’s nature vs nurture because they have so many of the same characteristics it seems impossible for their types to be so different and yet they are. Because your personality type is made up of your brain functions right and you can be one type while still having an overactive certain function that doesn’t technically align with your type so the way Dennis and Dee have influenced each other despite being such different types is very interesting in the whole outline of their psychology. Another interesting point is that Dennis and charlie are the only intuitive types in the group (ENTJ & ENFP) (Frank is ESTP) and also a pairing that seems to understand each other, charlie is certainly the person Dennis has the most compassion for and I find this super interesting because intuitive types generally don’t feel understood by sensor types and vice versa also since Dennis is an ENTJ and therefore the rarest type this also adds to the feeling of no one in the group truly understanding him and it’s bizarre bc I mean Dennis and Dee are twins they grew up together and tho Dee understands Dennis better than anyone else does there is still a rift between them where she is bad at intuitively feeling what’s going on with him at any given time possibly because she’s a sensor and that’s not naturally how she’s wired. Dennis on the other hand understands the gang intuitively to the point where it’s boring for him because they never surprise him - a reason why the RPG moment was so special and soft because he truly hadn’t been expecting it. This is what Dennis craves and values in the people around him - being able to surprise him. Being an INFJ myself (an equally intuitive type) I feel much the same way and also relate to him in the way that all my friends at school were sensors so though I enjoyed their company I never really felt like anyone truly understood me. I think that can be so frustrating for Dennis in regards to Dee sometimes too because she’s supposed to be his other half and he can read her so well yet she keeps missing the mark with his needs. It was interesting that in DTAMHD the Dee in his fantasy was on his side, knew how he’d react to something the gang did and actively tried to stop them from upsetting him because that’s what he wishes he had from her in reality. I don’t even really know what point I’m trying to make here these are just some thoughts and me finding a way to bring my two special interests together lol. Also just an extra little note Dee and macs types are very similar (ESFP & ESFJ) and yet they can’t stand each other which I find quite funny because as we know the gang is always offended by any kind of mirror so the fact Dee and Mac are so similar is also probably the reason they hate each other so much.

[vicvinegarandhughhoney]

TW SA

When I was writing my latest fic, I started thinking about Dee's bony hands.

It sounds ridiculous to say because in many ways, it is, but suddenly when I was writing about what happened with Ms Klinsky, an absolutely heartbreaking headcanon popped into my head.

What if the reason Dennis in particular is so repulsed by Dee's bony hands, and her 'boniness' in general, is because it reminds him too much of her? Of the librarian's hands all those years ago, the ones he's been desperately trying to forget but that reappear sometimes when his sister touches him?

The others don't know he feels like this, though. They assume he's just poking fun at his sister again, and it's easier for him to go along with it and pretend that's the reason, so he does.

He swallows down the memories and weaponises his trauma against the one person who could have helped him through it.

[jordblod]

[goblin-moment]

early seasons macdennis : Dennis is deeply insecure and Mac thinks he's possibly one of the best things to happen to him, and as much as Dennis doesn't want to admit it he relies on Mac and care for him deeply also. They may have their miscommunications at times and both of them aren't good people but they have each other in the end

Modern macdennis : Dennis is a deeply insecure man who has only spiraled as he has gone into his middle age, he still tries to bang young women just so he can say he did it and is deeply afraid of being known and showing any sort of vulnerability. He has been stuck in the same friend group since high school and has lived with the same man for close to 20 causing him to resent them all deeply cause if it were up to him he would have dropped them all (he's had multiple chances to leave but in the end he always came back to them). Time should never run out for him, he should be the exception to it all. Mac is practically in love with Dennis and has been for a long time and he's not completely sure how to express his feelings or if he even should. Mac lacks a filter causing him to overstep Dennis's boundaries on the regular in the hopes that if he pushes hard enough something will click and be the thing Dennis needs and Dennis will run into his arms. This in turn has led Dennis to resent Mac the most out of their friend group causing years of verbal abuse (and scratching), only recently has it seemed like they are best friends of 20+ years. These are two awful people who have done awful things, where in the end the question is 'who else?' They aren't necessarily each other's last options, but who in their right mind would want to live with Dennis? and who in their right mind would want to live with Mac?

[godduh]

IASIP Character Analysis & Kohut's Narcissism

DISCLAIMER: I am not a practising psychologist. Kohut’s narcissistic personalities are not currently used in 2024 as a diagnostic tool. The use of Kohut’s research is simply being utilised here as a character analysis tool. This is not meant to be a commentary on anyone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, nor do I wish to perpetuate stereotypes or cause offence. Please don’t take this seriously or as gospel; I just like analysing my faves. Thank you!

Heinz Kohut's main focus of research was on psychology of the self, which included research into narcissistic personality disorders. He described a concept called "selfobject"; how we experience people (or 'objects') as part of ourselves, particularly when they affirm the self's narcissistic behaviour. He went on to describe how failed interactions between children and their “selfobjects” (which is often their parents) can cause a damaged self and lead to a disordered & narcissistic self. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's ragtag gang are shown consistently displaying behaviours and actions that could be seen as narcissistic, often seen with grandiose fantasies, lacking empathy, and a need for admiration. Kohut describes four types of narcissistic self; in this character analysis I will examine the elements of each narcissistic identity and correlate it with each member of the gang (except for Frank; sorry buddy). All links and read times below!

Kohut's paper used for this analysis

Charlie - The Understimulated Self (3 minutes) Dennis - The Fragmenting Self (5 minutes) Mac - The Overstimulated Self (5-6 minutes) Dee - The Overburdened Self (6 minutes)

Full read time: ∼20 minutes

[williambeckettfan36]

not a day goes by where I don’t think about the difference between s5e9 (mac and dennis break up) and s14e4/5 (the gang chokes/the gang texts) (or just s14+)

cause in s5e9, the whole episode is obviously centered around how dennis and mac fundamentally need and depend on one another, and that they’re complete and utter best friends. even when they argue, they make up properly, and it gets all wholesome at the end - but then in the later two, dennis is constantly snapping at mac, is irritated by him, and to put it really really harshly, seems like he hates him at points. and then on the other hand mac is unhealthily devoted to dennis. i know the change is really obvious and it’s literally a plot point, but thinking about that specifically makes me sad