#and manipulative and just a little slimey bastard

[demodraws0606]

Sometimes I think people forget that cc!BBH can't breathe on a Minecraft Server without being some kind of character with fucked up morals.

Even PostEggpire!BBH was a bastard who immediatly went on to tourment Foolish (the guy he literally killed a few days before) and constantly avoided taking responsibility for the Eggpire situation (he blamed others and constantly downplayed what happened). He literally tourmented c!Tommy for extremely petty reasons (obsidian-ing his base) and let a terrorist out because he "felt bad for him" which he never admitted to.

And this is THE MOST sympathetic version of one of BBH's characters (Badlands!BBH, Eggpire!BBH and Q!BBH speak for themselves)

[ironwoman359]

Ok, I’m gonna say something. I don’t even know if it's entirely necessary to say or not, but it’s kinda been bothering me lately, so I’m gonna say it anyway, if only to scratch my own personal itch about the subject. (and btw, this isn’t in response to any particular post or anything, I’ve been sitting on this draft for about two days now, trying to word what I think about it just right, so please don’t take my intentions to be calling out any individuals or anything like that. In fact, I wouldn’t even say this is a call out, it’s more like me offering my opinion, but I digress.)

So...Deceit.

Deceit has been in all of two videos. Canonically, we know very little about him. We know that he’s “an inner coach who acts with the one goal of self preservation,” we know that he (apparently) always has to be engaging in some sort of deception or lie (my thoughts about how that works are at the end of this post if you’re curious), we know that he’s a slimey boi who to the best of our knowledge doesn’t actually excrete slime (also we know that his scales are actual scales, not makeup, due to Logan referring to them as such), and we know he’s a total drama queen (did you see his outfit?) who likes to make musical theatre puns. Honestly, not a lot to go on for the sake of fan depictions. 

So where am I going with this? 

Let. People. Write. Deceit. How. They. Want. To. 

Some people write Deceit as a horrible, horrible person. They write him as an abusive bastard and has done things to Virgil and the others that make my skin crawl. There is nothing redeemable about those characterizations....and that is okay. It’s okay to write Deceit as a completely unredeemable villain. Those characters are important to have, for a variety of reasons, and until now there was no easy way to have that type of character in canonverse without making up an oc, which not everyone wants to do. We have a villain now, a real actual villain, not an “I’m not always the bad guy” morally gray character like Anxiety. Let people explore what they want to explore with real, canon characters without calling them out on “demonizing Deceit” or writing ooc. It’s fanfiction. It’s okay if it’s ooc. Because you know what else is ooc?

Fluffy, cutesy, doesn’t mean any harm, really, soft boi Deceit. 

Also not canon. Also an okay character to write. Some people want to write Deceit as misunderstood, or as someone who’s trying his best but gets it wrong a lot, and is slowly coming around. That is also perfectly okay to write and explore. There’s a reason we have the ‘sympathetic deceit’ tag. Deceit fluff is a thing, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s really cute. Some people just wanna draw a cute snake boi. 

I dunno, I just feel like people are feeling they need to do either or...that they must either love or hate Deceit, that he must either be utterly despicable or completely redeemable. None of that is true. 

I have written both a villainous Deceit and a fluffy Deceit. I have read fics where he is an awful person, fics where he’s a begrudging or blossoming member of the famILY, and I have read fics where he’s somewhere in-between (particularly human AUs, there’s so many directions you could take him). I have enjoyed all of them. I appreciate the varied takes on the character. Because it’s fanfiction. It’s okay to write characters ooc in fanfiction if it suits your story. 

Heck, I’m writing a story where (minor spoilers for Our Own Villain chapters 3 and 4...) Roman literally locks Virgil in a dungeon in his room and sends out his entire army to hunt down Logan and Patton, but no one has said that I’m bad for writing Roman that way, in fact, I’ve gotten nothing but positive response to a villain!Roman. And the Pride!Roman has been met with resounding applause in this fandom (as it should, cause that idea is epic and the designs of him are so cool and creative). So why is writing Deceit ooc different? 

Because both of those versions, the horrific abuser and adorable blep....they’re both fanon. Deceit’s actions in the canon are not redeemable...but it’s possible for his purpose to be. There are times when lying is the correct choice in a scenario, the episode even went over that, but it still does not excuse his behavior in the episode. Because while trying to convince Thomas to do things his way, he was manipulative. He played off of the others’ hopes and fears to get what he wanted, and he dressed himself up (literally) as a friend, so that they’d be more likely to listen. That is manipulative behavior, and honestly it’s not that far of a stretch to imagine him being an emotional manipulator/abuser, and it’s also not that much of a leap to take a character from emotional abuser to physical abuser. 

So while that may not be canon, I (personally at least) find it to be perfectly within reason for fanon, and that is perfectly valid, just as fanoning Deceit to less bad than in canon is valid. The problem is we don’t have a lot of canon to go off of in the first place, so people get particularly attached to their fanon versions of Deceit. And it’s okay to be attached to your fanon, just remember that none of the views of Deceit outside of the actual (limited) canon are ““correct.”” Don’t confuse canon with fanon, but don’t be surprised if someone else’s interpretation of Deceit is different than yours, and please don’t let that be something that you get upset or defensive over. Just...I dunno, let everyone exist. Tag your Deceit content, tag your Sympathetic Deceit content, and just let people write/draw/think whatever fanon about Deceit they want to...even as we learn more canon info about him, that doesn’t make the fanon traits any less valid. 

Oh, and as a side note (pun not intended but wildly accepted) let’s stop pitting Sleep and Deceit against each other? It’s okay to like Sleep/Remy more than Deceit, even though he’s not a side, it’s okay to fanon Remy into the same universe as the sides, even though canonically he’s not in the same universe as them, just as it’s okay if you like Deceit more than Remy/Sleep. Let’s just not, you know, pit the characters (who aren’t even technically in the same universe) against each other and insist that one or the other is more deserving of love/hate or whatever. I dunno, I just see people do that sometimes and it bothers me. Like, they’re both good characters guys, let’s just enjoy them. 

Anyway, I’ve been rambling awhile and I don’t know if I’m making sense, but I felt like saying that. Resume your scrolling at your leisure <3