My poor blog has just became a Gravity Falls blog at this point….
ANYWAY! here’s some cut art that never made it into The Book Of Bill by Emmy Cicierega, it was originally posted on Twitter (source)
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I did decide to post the original art of these guys in the end; these are all from 2022, so definitely a little old. I have posted these to my Artfight account in case anyone is particularly interested in them!
Their extensive lore below (tw for discussion of mental health issues, abuse, trauma, drugs/alcohol, and self harm)
Button Bunny, Poppy Puppy, and Dreamy Deer are escaped lab experiments made from giving plushies real meat and blood inside. After enduring countless painful experiments, Button and his fellow test subjects killed all of the scientists and escaped into the real world, where they're free to do as they please.
Each of the plushies embodies a different "coping" style or set of trauma responses; this isn't supposed to be extremely deep or anything, just an idea, but to explain each one a bit further:
Button represents the "fight" response to danger, as well as cutting, self harm, and vengeful or violent thoughts/actions against one's abuser. He's fixated on blood and gore, both as a means of expressing his internal pain, and as a means of inflicting it on those who hurt him and his friends. He has the biggest thirst for blood and revenge out of the three, and is the most likely to pick a fight with a stranger. He carries a box cutter full of fresh, sharp razor blades right over his heart, signifying damage both taken and dealt. As a result, Button is "angrier" than the other two, but also more protective.
Poppy represents the "fawn" response to danger, as well as self-medication through drugs, alcohol, sex, and food. Poppy never denies herself the finer pleasures and in fact indulges in them more when she's upset. She's always likely to try to win someone over or "people please" her way out of situations and can become very upset if she genuinely thinks someone is mad at her. She smokes weed out of a heart-shaped bong, calls everyone "bestie," and sobs her eyes out into a bottle of cotton candy vodka if anything goes wrong. While she is the most outwardly emotional, she's also emotionally intelligent and glues the group together with her sharp eye for social cues.
Dreamy represents the "freeze" and "flight" responses to danger, as well as dissociation, nightmares, and severe phobias. While Button and Poppy may go on the offensive with someone they deem "bad," Dreamy will always behave passively and will never stir conflict if they can help it. Indeed, Dreamy will freeze like a deer in headlights if they're put in a stressful enough situation, and if they manage to unfreeze themselves, will run away from it as quickly as possible. Because of their fearful nature, Dreamy can only protect themselves through their experimental psychic ability to transfer their own nightmares to another person, which isn't even fully voluntary for them. Most of the time, Dreamy will defer to one of the others in a pinch.
All three of them have had their eyes swapped with one another, symbolizing the unity of the three very different trauma responses under the same trauma.
There are also two more Cursed Plushies, two wolves (one black and one white) named Yin and Yang, created by the sole surviving scientist to track down and kill Button, Poppy, and Dreamy, but I've yet to draw them even once, so they're much less fleshed out and generally less symbolic than the other three. I'll return to them someday, though.
Thanks for reading all that!
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