#i have a Lot more cpurpled analysis laying around on my blog somewhere if u need more info!

[apollos-boyfriend]

im writing an au that is supposed to include everyone in the dsmp. but i am a humble enjoyer and dont know about lots of characters, purpled included. can i get a guidebook to writing cpurpled? any tropes to avoid, motivations you see people getting wrong, etc?

okay so. purpled is Interesting bc there's a lot of depth to his character in the sense that he himself is not self-aware of his own actions/wants, making for there being three purpleds: the purpled that he shows to others, the purpled he feels he is, and the true purpled he himself isn't even fully aware of. and depending on how deep you wanna explore into his character, that third one likely won't even come into play, because that is more of an instance of a character study/purpled-centric piece, but i'll go over it anyways, just in case! splitting this into parts below the cut to make categorizing things a bit easier :]

first, the basics:

purpled has a very. unique way of talking. in serious moments, he's calm, collected, and intimidating, and will act like you'd expect a broody teenaged mercenary to. most of the time, though, his speech pattern is the world's most ungodly mixture of teenage boy and starving victorian orphan.

in fight or flight, he chooses fight 100% of the time, even if that fight is not immediate.

purpled only cares about a handful of things: self-preservation, his image, and money. this doesn't necessarily mean he won't do "good" things, just that his motives are less about saving people and more about advancing his own agenda. during the red banquet, for example, he only saved the attendants because he was paid to. eret called him a hero for it, but it was nothing more than a matter of who paid more. his morals are extremely skewed,

but he's not inherently malicious. he's indifferent. his actions are logical, not emotional, so despite harming others for his own gain, he typically holds no ill-will towards them. for example, the wiki cites that he and bad have a negative relationship for betraying the eggpire during the banquet, but in reality, purpled really doesn't see bad in anything but a neutral way. there are very few people he holds either positive or negative emotions towards, as his default state is indifferent, but willing to go along with the other person's emotions if they pay enough.

the only people he does feel a semblance of strong emotions towards are: hannah, boomer, ponk, tubbo, jack, and quackity. he has positive personal relationships with hannah, boomer, ponk, and tubbo, seeing them as genuine friends. additionally, ponk, tubbo, and jack are fellow businessmen, which he very much admires. quackity, of course, is the one person on the list he has overtly negative feelings towards, something that possibly extended towards slime after the ln finale, as well. he has an Odd relationship with tommy in the sense that they're somewhat rivals, but not in the usual fandom sense where "oh they secretly care about each other because they're sworn rivals". purpled would sell tommy to satan for a single cornchip and not even blink. there's also dogchamp, his dog, which is i think the one True attachment he's ever had on the server.

business is very important to him! purpled only really cares to talk to people who he sees on a similar intellectual level as him, and business is the closest way to his heart, as seen with his relationship with ponk.

anyone he doesn't see on his level is "lesser". this is specifically highlighted with his viewpoint on slime, as he sees slime as nothing but a child who can't fend for himself and has to rely on quackity for everything. this viewpoint is, obviously, extremely untrue, because purpled is an unreliable narrator in every sense of the word.

he's very smart and extremely capable. if he sets his mind to something, he Will accomplish it through any means necessary, even at the cost of others.

he is also. just sillie. at least around those he trusts or is pretending to allow to get close to him (like fundy in ln). he pulls stupid pranks for stupid prizes. he's just a boy that really loves his dog. he's the server's strongest warrior yet he runs screaming from boomer because they threatened to child-leash him. do not be afraid to make him a freak (because trust me he Is one)

some deeper stuff! all of these things are unspoken, and things he himself is not aware of. a dive into his subconscious thoughts, if you will. if you're writing something deeper with him, these are things i recommend alluding towards/highlighting, but in a sense that only the audience is aware of. they're not things that should be Explicitly Stated, at least not by him/his pov. purpled has little to no true self-awareness, and when he does have moments of introspection, he Still manages to fuck that up, which i'll be getting into

purpled does not really feel any negative emotions other than rage and spite. or, more accurately, he doesn't let himself feel anything other than rage or spite. when lamenting about his loneliness on the server, he immediately spins it into a revenge plot, believing it'll be solved as soon as he gets his just desserts. he does feel and process positive emotions, it's just negative ones he pushes aside for the sake of anger.

this is because, inherently, purpled does not believe he is in the wrong. ever. everything is always the fault of others, which is why he results to anger, because that's what happens when he pushes blame onto other people. he doesn't ever accept that his actions can be detrimental to himself, and that his issues are always the fault of others. for example, he believes that the reason his legacy on the server was "ruined" was because of quackity's intervention. while quackity's destruction of his ufo certainly didn't help, purpled's core issue was himself. his own self-isolation is what started the downfall of his legacy, and his continued isolation is what sealed its fate.

his inability to process his true emotions/wants makes him very prone to self-sabotage, although he believes the path he chooses is the right one. due to quackity's intervention, he believes that he wants a legacy to have power and to be remembered. when he laid out his issues, however, his biggest hang-up was that "if he asked people on the server to name three things about him, none of them could". deep down, what he wanted was a sense of connection, of building a legacy through the bonds formed with others, but he was unable to realize that.

he's so fucking stupid. all of this is me trying to say he's a fucking idiot. he has the emotional capacity of a pet rock with angry eyebrows drawn onto it. he's hypocritical and not even aware of it. i don't think he has the emotional ability to know what hypocrisy is.

the most important thing, though, is to not woobify him into the "manipulated minors" trope. purpled was not manipulated, and although his age plays into the tragedy of his character on a meta-level, it has no true importance to his actions/story. and although i gush about him a lot, and there are reasons to why he acts the way he does, he is not a good person. i can explain why he does what he does all i want, but at his core he is flawed and antagonistic. that's what makes him so good!! he is not a good person, he knows he's not a good person, and unless he's purposefully playing that role in order to deceive someone, he doesn't pretend to be one, and is up-front with others about that fact.