#inspired by someone making a post on the difference in the fandom's reaction to cwilbur's action vs ctubbo's

[xpoolboy]

both tubbo and purpled hurt people who didn't deserve it because of their trauma, so why does the fandom treat purpled's actions differently to tubbo's, despite being very similar?

i think a lot of it comes from cc bias and more history and connection with ctubbo than with cpurpled. i'm not really one to talk, seeing as my cc bias towards purpled has pushed me to be one of the biggest cpurp apologists to ever walk the planet, but there definitely is a difference between "my blorbo murdered someone" and "this character murdered someone". and ctubbo is a LOT of people's blorbo, or blorbo-adjacent. he's been around for basically the entire dsmp and has a long history and has built up a huge fanbase regarding his character. purpled, on the other hand, has been around for as long as tubbo on the dsmp, but his character isnt nearly as prominent, doesn't have nearly the same amount of history and involvement in lore, and therefore has a far smaller fanbase.

related to this, i think the fandom knows that tubbo's been through a lot of trauma during his time on the smp, especially because of his proximity to tommy and his higher viewercounts. purpled's trauma, on the other hand, often goes unnoticed past the very obvious. sometimes interpretations of his trauma are just completely incorrect (quackity manipulated him, etc).

finally, i think who they killed plays a part. again, cc bias and blorbos 4ever. c!slime? everyone's blorbo. or almost everyone's blorbo. c!aimsey? yes, he has a lot of fans, but her character is very new and hasn't reached the level of fan-favorite that cslime had. despite cslime having actual (minor) involvement in quackity's attempts to manipulate purpled, and caimsey having nothing to do with what tubbo's been through, the takes i've seen on ctubbo's recent actions are analysis posts on why he did it, at worst minor crit of his character, or people feeling bad and understanding why he did what he did, while not supporting it. on the other hand, for weeks after cpurpled's murder of slime, i saw a handful of analysis posts and a whole lot of (maintagged) "oh my god FUCK cpurpled for what he did to slime i hate him i hope he dies".

this isn't intended to be fandom critical, i'm just very curious on the reason behind the differences between how they reacted to purpled and tubbo's similar actions. feel free to add on!