#wlbr 3w4

[enneamage]

thoughts on charlie slime and wilbur interactions?

Wilbur and Charlie are a pair of Threes with different wings, Wilbur with a pretty heavy Four wing and Charlie with slightly more of a Two wing. Both are hard workers and want to keep busy with projects, so they tend to meet when they're in motion.

They both share a kind of chamelion instinct, which they both get to have fun with when they're recording with eachother and doing bits. Wilbur has said that Charlie 'gets' his humor and plays along well, which is probably a relief for him since he can struggle with how his humor lands with people. Charlie and Wilbur also share a background in non-comedy roleplay so they can dig into the drama aspect of bits as well-- they can throw themselves into something really moody and intense for a bit of drama if a video needs it.

I don't have a strong sense of how they are off-camera, which while that may be true for everybody I feel like it's especially true for a pair of image-concious storytelling Threes. They're similar but they're not so similar that it causes friction, so they've got good on-screen chemistry.

[enneamage]

I find it interesting how like you said the current dynamic between Phil and Tommy did start as 'well if Wil's my brother-' but progressed to the point of a genuine 'dad' slip up not long ago, with Phil embracing the family dynamic beyond its bit

Where Wilbur started and pushed it, Tommy took it very genuinely, and Phil would end up following suit, as again like you said he does have a 'fartherly' nature (and his own issues with his own father unsurprisingly)

The connecting issues between those three are their personal family life, and the sbi (aside from Techno who seemed quite secure with his family) allows them to play out roles reflecting/coping with said issues (it'd be interesting if their enneagrams lined up with the roles and to what degree family life affects your enneagram)

While there’s definitely a Trauma Reading to be done with the SBI, the good (?) news is it’s not unique to their behavior within it, so it wouldn’t isolate any of them in a harmful way. I was also thinking about how the three of them have turbulent histories that contribute to the way they behave, but their friend-quad turned out to be a net positive so sometimes things work out.

They do seem to have natures that let them enmesh a little (or a lot, depending) but that’s a trait that can exist in any type under the right circumstances. As for type-related stuff, I’ve broadly touched on some of the flavors of connection that they’re leaning into for this situation: Tommy wants his People to be stable, smart and responsive to him. Wilbur wants attention, stimulation and validation. Phil just wants to vibe with friends and is willing to extend a kind hand to do so. Techno is twinning with Phil among all this, glad to have a stable friendgroup.

The thing is, the power of SBI as a ‘family dynamic’ was reenforced about ten times as hard from the outside as it was from the inside. Found Family turned out to be a profoundly popular idea within the audience that found them, so it helped spread their popularity and perpetuate the idea further. Their reputation may have fallen out of sync with reality a bit because of this—whenever I would watch them as a unit I didn’t often see ‘serious’ family behavior beyond being very loyal to an inside joke, although the older ones would give advice to the younger ones in typical age-gap-friendship fashion.

I didn’t get super close to them as a big unit so if there are any deep cut and intense ‘family moments’ I may be out of the loop, so I’m open to hearing from people who have more practical history with them as a quad.

[enneamage]

In SBI dynamic Phil is kind of what is interesting to me. We pretty much already explored TommyxWilbur part and what they seek in this found family trope but how it works with Phil?

If we zero in on Phil, we find a guy who’s been generally known to quietly help out a lot of his streamer peers. I can’t hunt down the clip right now, but there’s a video out there of Ranboo, Tommy, and Wilbur talking about how he took the time to give them all advice + tips without saying anything. In that sense he’s a natural dadfriend, he isn’t in peoples faces or fussing over them excessively, but he’s got a helpfulness area buff.

Phil goes along with the Family Dynamic narrative because he’s got the primary Fatherly roots down with Wilbur, who is the origin of the meme. Since we’ve been talking more lately about Wilbur caretaker-ifying the people around him, returning to the topic of the SBI puts it in a bit of a new light. Phil will often be the first to say that Wilbur really pushed for the family dynamic, and sometimes I get the sense that all Phil had to do was smile and laugh and not fight it. Being Dadza has been fun for him so he won’t kick up too much of a fuss, but it wasn’t his natural idea, just a meme with legs.  

Tommy added another layer to it, turning this into a parentification pyramid scheme—If him and Wilbur are brothers, then Phil must be his dad. It’s just logic.

To Techno, a Phil is a Phil, so Phil never really had to play ‘Dad’ with him. Phil and Techno largely had their own thing going on (Nine to Nine telepathy) but they both valued the group dynamic so were content to go along within it.

[enneamage]

James Mrrtt said something very interesting the other day.

"...I thought for quite a long time that the respect went one way (meaning his respect for Wlbr as a musical artist), that I had a lot of appreciation for the work he did and I didn't quite feel it on return back to me but recently he's been sending me clips of myself that I have no idea how he found. And then I went over to his and I was in his recommended. And I was like huh, maybe this does go both ways."

Where do you think Wlbr's inability to convey what he thinks about his irls to them falls in with your 3w4 assessment? This moment suggests that he does have appreciation for the people around him (at least for James) but his actions/words don't reflect that to those people.

Wilbur seems to have a level of social difficulty that he’s trying to work through right now, so him becoming more expressive of his appreciation of other people might be part of that.  I know that Quackity has his story of thinking that Wilbur didn’t like him because of how he acted towards him IRL, but my guess is that Wilbur actually holds him in really high esteem and he’s got some defense mechanisms that keep him from expressing that clearly. Same probably goes for James’ skills.

I think he’s still within the 3w4 bracket because having an eye for the talents of the people around him doesn’t necessarily mean he can express them freely or knows how to feel about them. He might find it to be vulnerable to express open admiration, since it’s a bit of a mix between expression of analysis (what you see + think) and expression of emotion (how you feel about it). Sometimes he can be good with this, but if he’s dealing with repressing jealousy or trying to not seem ‘uncool’ he might stumble over himself.  

[enneamage]

On the wubble topic I definitely think you are right like they are fine and now and probably will be for a while I think the thing is she is almost 30 and probably wants to settle down (at least get married, get a house with someone, something like that) somewhat soon on the other hand he's a few years younger and it's kind of his whole thing to travel and not settle down beyond the band he's wrote multiple songs about it but even if he changed his mind singer isn't exactly the most stable career for that so if they do have an issue I think it will be at some point they just want different things from the relationship but that's definitely not a now issue bc they aren't to that level of serious yet they at least need to live together first but for now it seems they make each other happy

This is one of those “I don’t know what her ambitions are personally and 30 isn’t actually that old” situations. I think the material fact that they seem to be shuffling around living arrangements is more reflective of what they’re aiming for than age, though, so the nesting together concept holds at least some weight. Marriage In Modern America is a whole other can of worms and I don't have enough exposure to her to know how she feels about it, so it's in the air.

I must consult the thing that put me in this business to begin with, the 3/7 compatibility matrixes out there. It’s not unusual for people to describe this pair as a high-energy and exploration focused pair of stuff-doers, so I don't think that his dreams of travel and stuff-doing are a turnoff. I have a hard time imaging that she wouldn’t want to travel or explore with him, it’s just the touring part that could become an issue. Touring both is and isn’t travel, it’s not really exploring time as much as speedily transporting from hotel to hotel. It’s rockstar work but it is work, and I’ve heard that it wears on everyone involved.  

[enneamage]

mage mage wilbur talked about enneagrams on phil's stream

according to wilbur "phil is the biggest 6 you'll ever meet" because he's "all about emergency exits, security and always having a way out"

wilbur also mentioned that he and quackity were 3s and kristin is a 2

- technoposting

God I remember him offhandedly saying that Phil was a Six before with the most confidence and having to pause to take a breather-- this is what happens when we don’t talk about counterphobia in Sixes we get Nines as collateral OTL. Like homie I don’t know how to say this but that’s trauma holdover from a rough childhood not being a Six. I’m standing firm on Phil being a very dad-friend flavored Nine.

He’s forgiven for thinking that Q is a Three because people don’t talk about how ambitious Fours can get. I wrote here on why it’s important that he’s a core Four and I used this ask as a bit of a  comparing and contrasting piece.

Kristin is a Two with a Three wing though I will co-sign that, I never brought it up before but that’s a big part of her vibe to me.

[enneamage]

what is wilbur's instinctual subtype?

I want to say that he leads with “Sexual”/Intimacy/one-on-one followed by social and then self preservation last if I had to do up a stack. I flop around on if the instinctual subtypes are as useful as the core system, but if I had to put them in order I would say he leads with those.

[enneamage]

I dont remember if you answered this elsewhere or if its kind of an impossible question to answer, but do you think sbi dynamics would have/could have existed as intensely as it does now if the members had a different enneagram personality type? What changes do you think could also produce what we see today? Like if tommy was a 4 or wilbur was a 6

Usually the idea of type-swapping people changes too much about them to keep them being the same people, but working within the broad strokes of this idea I think I can say something useful-ish. I think if I were to make the ‘roles’ of the SBI into archetype slots I would list them off as follows:

Eldest helper friend, someone with a soothing nature who is also very skilled.

The narrative center of the group, swaps between child-friend and leader in bursts, initiates situations / the visionary.

Also skilled and slightly more independent figure, equal parts kind & ambitious.

Supportive ambivert with both youthful and older-than-given-age energy. Also initiator of situations.

I can imagine a healthy handful of types and subtypes that could fit into those categories, so nature may produce some SBI-alikes in the future. A 9-9-6-3 dynamic isn’t necessarily written in the stars so it’s not essential to them turning out the way they did, it’s much more who they happen to be as unique individuals. Still, I wouldn’t be able to separate their type from who they are.

In general, found family friend quads come in all shapes and sizes and as long as you have one parent-friend a pseudo-family may occur. Time, exposure and shared experiences knit them pretty closely as well, so it was also situational. While they were already close by the pandemic, quarantine basically locked them in a discord call and threw a Tommy in for good measure. On top of everything else, there’s an added baseline of ‘I love you because you are there.’

[enneamage]

just in case you have watched it, what do you make of the Wlbr Genius vid? The part when he talks about the bridge in CMWLK -he likes to take a low point in his life and "make his misery theatrical" because of comedic value- screams 3 to me. Truly wild that he wholeheartedly believes he's an 8

I feel like I didn’t get too much from the interview itself because it seemed fairly meditated and practiced, he didn’t give much away and he wanted to be #relatable.

I think I would have lost my mind if we had another confident Eight mistyping but I recall that he mentioned that he thinks him and Q are both Threes (He’s like two quarters right, a he’s a 3w4 and Q is a 4w3.) I know he had Eight by Sleeping at Last in mind for C!Wilbur so that might be where this idea came from. Eight is probably the most dynamic song on the album and a lot of people are attracted to it because of that, he probably had the in-song themes in mind when he was Writing C!Wilbur kind of unaware that he was portraying. Y’know. All that.

Who needs crit when Tommyinnit has haterism in his DNA. I’m half-joking but of all the people to mainstream calling Wilbur an untalented pretentious prick I didn’t know Tommy would be on the frontlines, projecting a very clickable reaction video to millions of people. This action may have consequences, he did not hold back.

[enneamage]

can you expand more on why you feel like wilbur has npd/a cluster b disorder?

Oh god a direct excuse to talk about it I thought this day would never come

I’ve been an NPD truther to varying degrees of intensity for a while now. I knew it was a possibility, but things were pushed over a line after a while, and that was when I had a little (big) research arc around learning the ins and outs of NPD. It was eerie how much of what I learned lined up with what I was seeing.

I see this essay passed around in the actuallynarcissistic tag on tumblr a lot and I can see why, it’s probably the most comprehensive ‘here are the actual symptoms beyond grandiosity and here’s what they’re connected to’ list I’ve seen. There’s a lot of shoddy info about NPD out there because it’s a sensational topic that’s easy to get imprecise about, so I strongly suggest reading it to get a sense of what the condition can look like. I see a lot of Wilbur’s ‘quirks’ on this list, there’s a reason I keep linking it.

Starting off, Wilbur would fall on the ‘fragile’ or ‘covert’ end of the NPD spectrum, which presents differently than the grandiose end. There’s generally fluidity between these two points, but most of what we’ve seen of Wilbur leans more towards the covert end, having grandiose fantasies while remaining self-deprecating and sensitive in real life.

Internally/Externally Inconsistent

It’s not unusual for people in general to have different parts of their personality come out with different contexts, but NPD can push this into an extreme. The different levels of development across the different parts of himself are… wide. He knows how to handle a controversy like a politician but the closer he gets to his more vulnerable center the more childlike he can get, and time has revealed that the unstable part is the constant.

Wilbur has a lot of need, emotionally and practically. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is based on being self-preoccupied, concerned with combatting feelings of helplessness, despair, and irrelevance through their ego and external environment. Those with Vulnerable NPD tend to lean more openly anxious and depressive, playing down their grandiose fantasies but remaining passive aggressive and sensitive to criticism. They turn to their environment for praise, care, and validation, trying to balance out a feeling that can range from profound existential anxiety to internal deadness.

I’ve talked about how Wilbur used to threaten to cry as a power move, which is a layered thing to do. His despair is real, and he feels as vulnerable as he acts, but he has a way of throwing himself on the ground as a defensive move and playing dead to try and ward off arguments that he knows he can’t win. He will still occasionally pout to try and diffuse situations, leveraging pity as a tactic to try and make other people ‘the bad guy’ by engaging further. He will try to guilt people into caring for or catering to him by projecting his helpless self-image when he feels burnt out or cornered, to varying results; this is fairly pronounced Vulnerable NPD behavior.

At the same time, people with NPD tend to have an over-developed capacity to create temporary social masks in order to get what they want. Wilbur is good at making promises, short speeches and temporary impressions that make him look very promising and reasonable as a person. He may even believe what he says in the moment, as NPD has a kind of dissociative quality when it comes to being inconsistent, but most of these behaviors are geared towards short-term satisfaction over long-term payoff; praise for being impressive now is better than having to work to keep a promise later. Wilbur has a lot of unfulfilled promises in his life, and he's even sung about his ‘short sighted’ impulse control.

Obsessively Oppositional

Wilbur has very pronounced authority and control issues that show up in big and small ways.

He’s has said before that he ‘cannot’ work for someone else, and he’s even aware of that fact that it’s because he’s disagreeable. While I don’t know the exact extent that this has gotten him into trouble before, the fact that it’s affected his ability to make money and live is pretty telling. I’ve talked in less sensational terms about how Wilbur is very sensitive and defiant to feeling undermined, but it’s a really big part of what makes him self sabotage in certain situations. Wilbur can get resentful of prolonged social cooperation and may begin to rebel against it consciously or unconsciously by dragging his feet.

Wilbur also gets stubborn about weird little things a lot. The MCC skin thing is a perfect example of a petty ongoing thing, where he wants to push back against control by not participating in team skins for vanity and control reasons. In life he pushes against the petty things that he can get away with as acts of rebellion to feel more in control.

I feel like it’s not controversial to say that he’s got weird politics and his fixation on freedom shows up in them a lot, both in being a hopeless ameriboo and being connected to libertarianism. His whole dirty crime boy bit was kind of suspicious as well, being basically resentful of laws. He seems to hate having rules placed on him, especially by authority figures.

Emotional Dysregulation

Wilbur’s emotional control is not where it should be for a man his age. Even for someone socialised male, his raw anger at things some days suggests a very sensitive set of nerves, and the things that set him off are very telling. People with NPD, particularly the covert variety, are very sensitive and reactive to shame, criticism, and feelings of inadequacy, and will notice them everywhere. This is muddy because it overlaps with the depressive and anxious symptoms, so his sensitivity can be passed off as stemming from them instead of all being connected to something larger.

This is a death by a thousand papercuts thing. It’s generally simmering in the background, reacting with a bit more anger and intensity than he should to things in his environment, particularly if they set off his shame response. Wilbur fires back at chat defensively, getting into his condescending voice at things that range from mildly irritating to innocuous. He knows to not pick an outright fight with his own chat most of the time, since thousands on one is a stupid fight to pick, but he once made a comment along the lines of “Five minutes in and insulting chat, that’s not good” which suggested that it’s a thing he has to actively stop himself from doing. He tends to play off his need to cut people down as an English personality/humor thing, but the genuine anger underneath it makes me think twice.

The Love Life Problem

His history comes into this because he’s indirectly stated that he experiences the idealise, devalue, discard cycle that people with unaware NPD tend to experience with romantic relationships. This is the process where the internal sense of lack and instability in someone with NPD crosses with their emotional impulses and they find someone in their environment to project their hope of stabilising/fulfilling themselves onto.

They tend to use whatever people skills they have to woo and appeal to the person of their choice, hoping that this person is basically going to be the one. They can have a very complimentary view of them in this phase, idealising them and putting their hope towards a perfect future with them. After a while a sort of disgust builds towards the person for not serving the purpose that they had initially reached out to them for, as well as being ‘fooled’ by the social mask. An agitation builds up from feeling dead and isolated despite being around the other person, turning to resentment. They then start to devalue their partner, acting out and being dismissive. (Your Sister Was Right is him outing himself.)

This is why I find it so eerie when Wilbur goes into romance mode with somebody, there’s a good chance that he’s setting himself up to resent them as a consequence of his own actions. The part inside of him that ‘needs’ the most will never reach the person that he’s wooing if he dips into a false self, but his inner self has a bitter disposition and a deeply vulnerable amount of need, so it makes sense why he doesn’t lead with it.

(This is a weird little thing that happened with ghostbur actually, he began to resent that people liked the mask better than him and were so easily ‘fooled.’)

C!Wilbur

You know how Wilbur is a critblr gateway drug because he compulsively tells on himself in bizarre ways and you’re left holding the puzzle pieces whether you wanted them or not? I’ve really got to emphasise that c!Wilbur fits the profile of someone who has NPD having a meltdown to an uncanny degree. It’s fiction so it’s larger than life, but It’s like Wilbur stored the symptoms of NPD inside him like a fridge. Everyone knows that pogtopia was meant to be c!wilbur’s mental health spiral, but they never go as far as naming what all those symptoms were connected to. The fact that he hit every branch on the way down is way too much to call a coincidence, even though I’m sure it was unconscious on Wilbur’s part.

His character starts out making what NPD literature would call a shared fantasy, a kind of conceptual space where his vision spreads to others and they buy into a story that he makes about the world, as well as his role in it. He sells people on the value of this vision, and by extension the value of himself. Wilbur has an ongoing fascination with both politicians and cult leaders, and they feel very relevant here.

L’manburg is based on dismissing Dream’s authority as admin and substituting his own, disavowing Dream as a tyrant and declaring liberty and freedom and fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want. He invites people to the secret clubhouse and they elevate the legitimacy of the whole thing, but things quickly begin to unravel as they don’t feed the power fantasy in the way that he wanted.

While he publicly tries to play the charming social role, behind the scenes he is breaking down. His emotions are unstable in public and explosive in private, intense crying episodes and rage for feeling useless and ineffective in spite of his position. He can’t tolerate not being the ultimate power so he tries to force legitimacy through cheating (implicitly believing that he would not win legitimately), which backfires on him permanently.

He spirals, giving in to the part of himself that is terrified of his own insignificance and desperate to prove importance and agency, even if it means self-destruction. He declares himself ‘the bad guy.’ He makes constant grabs for power, trying desperately to remain in control, resorting to threats of violence against himself and others (the tnt). He obsessively cuts down his most devoted ally, Tommy, trying to compensate for his inferiority and jealousy. He experiences persecutory delusions, which are a lesser known symptom of NPD under stress, breaking with reality and falling into a state where his mind invents information independent of the world around him. While all of this is going on, he keeps lying to his father about how his life is going, trying to maintain the illusion of success.

While most people with NPD wouldn’t necessarily use violence, the extremes of behavior resorted to because of an internal crisis can be a serious issue, outward or inward. NPD has cluster B status for a reason, and it’s still a disorder, which means that it is still associated with dysfunction. People with NPD have something of an infamous cycle where they can create concepts and plans with the new people they meet, time passes and the fantasy decays, and then something comes crashing down that makes them leave or gets them cut out of other peoples lives. They then move on to somewhere new to start the cycle over again, hoping that this time they’ll be able to step into their fantasy for real.

The Rust roleplay never got that far but Wilbur immediately created another leader with imposter syndrome who needed to manipulate people in order to keep his position, and what an interesting thing for a successful streamer who dislikes streaming to do.

I can’t know exactly what role delusion plays in Wilbur’s life, but we do know that he is a hypochondriac. Certain manifestations of hypochondria are a mix of anxiety and delusion, becoming obsessively and unshakably convinced that you’re going to die because of a given illness. Feelings of persecution and impending doom are a feature of NPD, an episodic or baseline anxiety about feeling like something is either approaching or about to break.

How do you know it’s not something else?

On their own these things might not be that convincing, but taken all together as the dynamics of one dude it becomes the simplest answer. While he might have a number of issues as symptoms, most of his behavior can be traced back to the unique way that NPD would be affecting him.

I understand why Borderline and NPD are neighbours in the DSM, because they share a lot of common ground, but they come from different structures and dynamics. BPD splitting shows up abruptly in the moment, while NPD relationship devaluing can be a more subtle ongoing process with more shades of grey.

Fin

Overall this is why I’m convinced that he’s got a foot over the line into NPD territory. If you’re left with the feeling of “but he’s just a guy” when you think of him or see him next—he is, at the end of the day. People with personality disorders are still people, and individuals before all that as well. He won’t be a walking bag of symptoms all the time, but he’s prone to behaving and processing things differently from someone who doesn’t have his personality adaptations. He’s still capable of being reasonable and right and relatively functional, he just has a bunch of other stuff going on as well.

[enneamage]

Crimeboys breakdown

This came with a lot of delay because we’ve got so much content showing how crimeboys evolved over time, way too much to cover tbh. We’ve definitely reached the brothers-truthing endgame, where Tommy literally just calls Wilbur his brother in front of strangers because it’s easier than explaining how they got here.

*slams hands on table* we as a society have lost track of the fact that the satisfaction of brothers truthing was because Wilbur was an on-and-off ice queen about it and every sliver of affection and synergy was a ‘win.’ Wilbur was a prideful bastard and would pull away from being overtly affectionate to Tommy for a long time, having correctly identified his connection to this kid as being… dicey optics-wise. In the end brothers-truthing became so prevalent that it became the main narrative, so there wasn’t much off-color suspicion to throw off; brand-friendly sentiment has won the day.

Part of brothers-truthing was also a way to put a party hat on them fighting in a way that would have been concerning without the siblings comparison. Wilbur can stoop to Tommy’s level and lower from time to time, and that might be okay if it primarily happened in playful contexts, but that line has always been blurry. Tommy is still the leading champion of driving Wilbur up the wall, but Wilbur likes to oscillate between being the adult and being the child in his relationships, and its mostly Tommy’s ability to drag care out of people that keeps Wilbur in adult-mode. When Wilbur slips, it gets brushed under the rug as ‘big brother’ behavior.

I don’t have insight into what Wilbur felt about Tommy socially in the beginning, since the Very Online Content Creator sphere is a whole other world and there’s no gauging normal vs abnormal from here. I know that along the way the two spent a lot of time together, either as a duo or in a group “SBI” context, so their attachment was earned through intense hours put in despite how two years isn’t that long of a time. Wilbur kept emotional distance from Tommy in the beginning because that’s the normal thing for an adult his age to do, but Tommy was enthusiastic, troublemaking, and relatively sincere. Wilbur was also in a series of rocky mental states so seeing anyone relate to him so devotedly and positively probably ripped open a huge soft spot for him; Wilbur is on record saying that for a while Tommy was the only reason he was getting out of bed. Again, the story of brothers truthing was an audience investing in a narrative where Tommy melts Wilbur’s heart.

These two find each other incredibly validating.

Tommy can be relentless when it comes to getting the attention of someone he admires, and for a time he was crawling all over Wilbur, so having him in his life is wildly valuable for him. Wilbur became one of his most regular companions and contacts during some of the most intense periods of the pandemic for both of them, so this connection is very firmly cemented in his mind. Wilbur is a good source for him to ask questions and bounce ideas off of because he’s got an opinion on everything and can usually (seem to) back it up, which helps Tommy orient himself. At this point Wilbur has probably sunk hundreds of hours explaining the moral ins and outs of the world to Tommy, which has helped along his personal development immensely.

Wilbur values being valued and loves that he’s fallen into an advisor role. He’ll complain about it because of course he will, but at this point he would be devastated if he were to ever lose Tommy’s faith and attention completely. There’s no way that he isn’t emotionally attached to Tommy, even if showing it & processing it can be complicated for him. Wilbur spotted Tommy’s talent very quickly, and to this day I sense some smugness that he ‘called’ that Tommy would be as big as he is. (Is it possessiveness? Boy we’re not going there today.) Wilbur became Tommy’s friend-manager, consistently guiding and shaping the trajectory of his talent, gaining an ally to help bring his ideas to life. Because being Tommy’s Adult disrupted his usual shtick, Wilbur basically wouldn’t be the man he is today without Tommy’s influence. His career and public persona is also heavily rooted in that part of himself now, so Tommy made Wilbur as much as Wilbur made Tommy.

There’s always been an interesting part of their dynamic that doesn’t translate outside of enneagram talk: These two share a connecting line—when a Three grows in health they tend to act more like Sixes, and when a Six is under stress they act more like Threes. When Wilbur and Tommy first met, Tommy would have full on combative episodes of being vain and unhinged on stream, and Wilbur was waiting for him right at the moderately unhealthy Three point. Wilbur wouldn’t have the patience to meet these moments with much empathy, but they were going samesies none the less. This made them both explosive, petty and attention-grabbing, which is pretty well documented in the early DSMP days; they kind of deserved each other.  

It feels like foreshadowing was captured in their first meeting on SMP Earth; Wilbur was throwing his weight around and having fun messing with an eager to please Tommy. And Tommy, not one to be overshadowed used and ignored on day one, started metaphorically tearing up the lawn and tanked the v adult politics business whatever deal. There’s something important about the moment that Wilbur first realises that he can’t just drag Tommy around without giving something back: guidance.

Tommy is a natural at kicking up an unignorable fuss and Wilbur is a natural scold. These two are, in their own way, another example of when people are compatible with each other at lower points of health. Tommy gets the best of Wilbur’s advice (Hypocrisy?) by getting the social rule book thrown at him when he does and doesn’t ask for it, benefiting from Wilbur’s social insight and concern with managing talent. Wilbur needs other people way more than he’ll ever admit so having someone so intent on keeping him around while also being wildly successful has probably metaphorically (if not literally) saved his life.

It’s worth noting that Tommy knows his worth better than his attachment would suggest; he isn’t quite relating to Wilbur through hero worship anymore. This is an impression I got from offhanded comments, but Tommy is capable of piercing lucidity related to when Wilbur is being irrational or an asshole. It’s not constant because it primarily comes out in one-off lines and short conversations, but Tommy is very aware that Wilbur is flawed. (This is a recent example of him talking about an experience from way back—it’s fast but “he’s a little bitch inn’ ‘e” speaks volumes.) Tommy is also aware of his value to Wilbur as a social support and a stream talent—he knows that he’s got leverage if he needs it, and he likes the ways that Wilbur depends on him.

Tommy wants to know what Wilbur thinks about things to orient himself, but he’s also got a diversity of opinions to pull from since it’s in his nature to look for advice. Tommy’s best self isn’t free from advice, it’s him with an abundance of advice that he gets to evaluate and then have the final say on. Wilbur is still responsible for instilling himself in Tommy’s head as the voice of reason because that’s just how he talks-- he used to pelt Tommy with “should” and sharp opinions some days, slowly giving Tommy a kind of deference reflex. He’s still capable of rebelling, though, because there are plenty of instances where Tommy has gone against what Wilbur has advised him.

In the end, Wilbur wanted to manage and Tommy wanted to be managed, sweet dreams are made of this /j.

These two might drift as time goes on, but Tommy is not a bridge-burner if he can help it and if Wilbur knows what’s good for him, he’ll never completely shut Tommy out. It’s inevitable that they’ll change because Tommy just isn’t a child anymore and Wilbur doesn’t like streaming has different life dynamics than he used to, but they’re probably going to have space for each other in their lives for a while to come.

[enneamage]

Wilbur - 3w4

Wilbur just really wants to be a Good Three

While it’s true that Wilbur has trouble staying on task, has had periods of almost complete inertia and a bit of the old over-promise and under-deliver, the kind of person that he consistently aspires to be (and beats himself up when he isn’t) is a reasonably functional Three. You can see him light up and get excited at the thought of being charismatic, persuasive, talented, and a hard worker. He will literally list these traits unprompted sometimes. It very much seems like who he wants to be, and what he imagines his best self as.

Wilbur also has a nose for artists who share his type. Bo Burnham? 3w4. Fella from crywank? 3w4 with a similar stripe of mental health issues that Wilbur has. Filthy Frank? Take a guess. He’s regularly drawn to Threes with a heavy four wing that gave them a similar caustic bite to his own, something that he seemed to take as part of himself and model himself after in ways. He was the first guy to make me wonder if it was a red flag if all of someone’s favorite artists are all their own type :P.

On being ‘effective’

Threes are known for wanting esteem, praise, and to be seen as successes. The thing about this view is that it confuses wanting fire for wanting smoke, as what most Threes are oriented towards as their main motivation is effectiveness.

Threes need to be able to feel that they’re not helpless; that they make an impact on others when they’re seen and heard (not ignored), that they’re good at what they do (not incapable), that they’re unique to others and the world (not disposable), and that they can compete (won’t be subverted or defeated.) They can’t ‘just relax’ about this because it’s essential to how they function, and if they’re in a situation where all of these things fall out at once they’ll feel a traumatising amount of shame. Usually Threes need to work towards developing a healthy, realistic amount of trust in themselves and their environment to feel safe enough to take the edge off, but they keep their goalsetting -> achievement feedback loop even when they’re healthy. 

How do you know if you’ve moved the world, let alone done it correctly? How do you measure a success, even if it’s the smallest thing you can imagine? Threes calibrate themselves against praise as validation that they’re capable people, and they’re wired to get a massive hit of feel-good energy when they do. Wilbur fuckin loves praise, but he specifies that he wants people to be critical of his output—he wants to be sure that he’s actually doing a good job.

Wilbur’s version of this has crossed into unhealthy territory, possibly due to developing some Narcissistic personality adaptations. He tends to feel like he’s not effective enough if he feels even a small bit of other people’s influence in a situation that he isn’t leading or designing. His shame reflex is incredibly sensitive, and he’s terrified of being underwhelming. This can cause him to panic and overcompensate, which can manifest as putting on arrogance, making up an alternative reality in his head where he’s cartoonishly superior, or trying to cut other people down.

A last resort of his is the ‘paradox of giving up,’ of darkly embracing a vision of himself as completely disempowered if he feels backed into a corner. This is where he weaponizes his moodiness in a last-ditch attempt to try and be effective; he will try to strongarm people into feeling bad, giving in to him, comforting him or leaving him alone. He would literally threaten to cry, I remember it clear as day. While the emotions are real, they’re still being wielded like an improvised weapon in some cases, a final grab at control.

The Four wing

In theory, an ‘undiluted core Three’ is a social chameleon that would be compelled to try and appeal to anyone and excel in any situation. However, in the case of a 3w4, the four wing moves Wilbur towards distinction and authenticity. Threes with a four wing aim to be effective in specific systems and subcultures, modeling themselves after more niche people that they consider to be ‘successful’ according to what they’ve chosen to value.  

They’re a bit more introverted than 3w2’s and like to focus more on work and external achievements than their image (but they absolutely like both.) The four wing makes them more okay with being off beat and strange, with some of them even finding it funny—Wilbur definitely has this trait. Even though it stings, they’re actually more okay with being disliked under the right circumstances because they get a bit more value from working on projects than themselves being the project.

The four wing gives him an inner critic that’s both assessing his output and how authentic it is. Wilbur can put on personas, but he can’t keep them on for as long as a 3w2 can without slipping up or getting noticeably uncomfortable, so he’s mostly stuck telling versions of the truth at the end of the day. Wilbur can lie like a true con artist, don’t get me wrong, but he’s also prone to compulsively confessing information later.

There’s an entire subgenre of music I like to call Threes be telling on themselves, where artists who are clearly Threes write songs in the most rappers be telling on themselves way possible. While this self-awareness seems impressive at a glance, it doesn’t always actually pair with a commitment to change, and instead may function like a dissociated running commentary or a self-deprecating stab done in public to feel they’ve gotten attention for ‘who they really are.’

Natures Talent Scout

Wilbur has an eye for other people’s talents, skills, and behaviors. At his best, he’s capable of hyping up other people and giving them praise and detailed feedback about what makes them great. At his worst, he gets bitterly jealous and feels inadequate when comparing himself to others. When he’s walking down the middle, he leans towards taking a managerial role with people, advising on how they can perform ‘better’ (often according to his standards.) He won’t admit it because he’s fiercely individualistic, but Wilbur has a way of merging with other people when he's in a feedback loop with them, taking them as part of himself as markers in his internal map of the world.

Threes are area-of-effect people, and some of them keep friend groups that can experience and participate in the Three’s vision of reality. It's actually a very Three thing to gather and organise talent to work together for a goal, seeing the potential in people and imagining a way for them to maximise their effectiveness according to a vision. Soothouse started as a friend group, but it takes some nerve to gather people and go “guess what we’re doing, and I’m going to be the one organising it.”

Wilbur drafted Techno and Phil to be his play-family, solidifying his ties to them using a kidding-but-not-kidding fantasy. This isn’t to say that they aren’t really friends, his positive feelings and admiration for them are very legitimate, but it was an emotionally strategic reflex on his part to tie them to him in this way. Wilbur later took on the job of mentoring Tommy (which Tommy offered gladly) and in interviews will be very proud when he explains that he was the one who saw the talent in Tommy that would eventually put the world in a headlock. It’s worth noting that Tommy was the first brother-truther before he was adopted into the SBI, so how the tables turn.

Because this is critblr and we’re allowed to mention that C!Wilbur counts as Wilbur information, I would point to L’Manburg Wilbur as him living out a pattern that he knows he’s capable of. He attempted to establish a country where he had absolute esteem and influence, but the position didn’t feel right and his fear of being ineffective kicked up, causing him to try and cheat to create a different atmosphere. This backfires, he spirals into thinking he’s the worst person ever (which is in itself a grandiose claim, the worst person in the world is actually a very ‘effective’ and irreplaceable figure if you think about it) and he makes a final power grab in a massive act of public violence, self-destructing as proof that he can do something.

(Remember, it’s only leadership if you’re willing to work in service to the people that you’re organising, otherwise it’s just sparkling dependency.)

Pull and Push

Chasing the love and admiration of people is one thing, while being influenced by steady human attachment is another. Wilbur’s conflict between wanting to be effective socially while also not wanting to be ‘subverted’ can really mess with his social life, love and otherwise. This is the root of his ‘love of the chase,’ and why he can shove people away once he’s reached a place of security with them. When he’s expected to behave like a friend / boyfriend / coworker, although one part of him wants to maintain attachments and have a stable healthy social life, another part of him can hate feeling controlled or obligated. Sometimes he’ll push someone away and then try and win them back again, which makes for a really confusing hot-and-cold experience.

I once came across a Three (who wasn’t too healthy) who said that they didn’t like being known for an extended period of time, but loved making first impressions and meeting new people. This was layered- they normally have a lot more control and ability to tailor their first impression of another person to what they think the other person wants, and it’s gratifying to get confirmation that they can be charming or persuasive to other people. Thing is, extended exposure tends to bring out their actual personality, which tended to be a lot different from what they had put out at first.

Pure Imagination

Wilbur’s attachment to “Privately Owned Spiral Galaxy” kind of speaks for itself, but fantasy and the ability to imagine alternate futures and realities play a big part in Three life. Wilbur exercises his talent for social shapeshifting and finding ‘effectiveness’ in roleplay, but it’s worth noting that he really does find it fun, on top of all the weirdness. The thing is, Wilbur takes his mind for fantasy and finding potential in ideal futures everywhere, even in real life. Usually it comes in handy since content creation is in the weird gap between fantasy and reality, and he can give situations a good beginning-middle-ending structure. However, when he’s just trying to live day-to-day, he can get lost in what he sees as potentials and what ‘should’ be rather than what is.

Wilbur can be eager to escape into an idealised world that he has created in his mind, while casting the people around him in certain roles. This doesn’t have to be unhealthy, but it crosses a line when he over-writes or strongarms other people into playing the role that he wants them to, sometimes backhandedly punishing people when they don’t. For example, Wilbur used to take his perfectionism out on Tommy, snapping at him for not being his perfect comedic prodigy. (There was probably some jealousy there as well.)

Silver Tongue

One of the easiest, simplest ways to ‘make realities’ and bring people into them is to talk to someone. Wilbur really wants the ability to be persuasive and charming, which he can definitely be at times. While he doesn’t seem to admire any one particular politician, he does find the idea of politicians compelling both for their power and their ability to use words to affect entire countries. Big public speaker energy.

You really need to watch what he does over what he says, because when he’s ‘on’, his go-to is his language. Wilbur’s vice is the empty promise of good ideas, which he may actually ‘believe in’ at the time, with an allergy to feeling like he has to follow through with them. In theory he might be able to get past this one day, but it will ultimately be up to his willingness to put in the work to change.

[enneamage]

As a 4w3 I would love a breakdown on quackity and his relationship with Wilbur, I do think it’s interesting as a 3w4 and a 4w3 they are really similar in a lot of ways

Quackity is a Four with a heavy Three wing, and Wilbur is a Three with a heavy Four wing. They share a lot of common ground on paper, but they’ve clearly turned out very different.

They’re both big individualist artists who crave distinction and success. As touched on a bit previously, Quackity has more consistent contact with his emotions than Wilbur, although they’re both influenced by them quite heavily. They both have a drive for recognition and a hope to connect with people through their work. There’s even some overlap in wanting to prove something to themselves with their own success, wanting to feel like they can make an impact on the world with their efforts.

These two don’t seem to be outstandingly close friendship-wise but they’re good collaborators who have a lot of respect for each others work. Wilbur has talent scout instincts, and it doesn’t take much to see how much raw creativity and talent that Quackity brings to the table. Quackity sees the vision and the drive in Wilbur, respecting his skills as a writer and ideas-man.

They have a somewhat different approach when it comes to people. Quackity has different modes but he definitely wants to be authentically seen, while Wilbur is a bit more of a chameleon and can show people what he thinks best suits the situation. Wilbur isn’t always in impression-management headspace though, and will often have moments of impulsive self-disclosure, so it evens out.

Despite core Three-ness, Wilbur is still an individual who is subject to his individual ‘quirks’, like the abrasive sense of humor that he tries to pass off as just being English. I feel the need to call this trait out in particular because it is both an example and an exception to his concern with being charming—he’s compelled to make jokes but he fails to notice when he’s just offloading angst onto somebody else until after. Quackity is emotionally aware and transparent enough to have been like “fuckin cut it out” to some of Wilbur’s more abrasive social ticks (negging his stream, ect.) when he tried them with Quackity. Frankly Wilbur is thankful to be given the chance to clean up his impressions with the people he’s trying to win over, so this was positive for him.

Quackity is fluent in vibe, that is his true first language. Quackity will notice when Wilbur's actions don’t match his feelings or his words. How he chooses to handle this information is up to him, since he does tend to be forgiving and optimistic about Wilbur, but there are a lot of little tricks Wilbur uses that won’t work as well as he might hope with Quackity. Quackity wants to be on good terms with him so it’s not like Wilbur is holding on for dear life to someone who is retreating, but it does put Wilbur in a bit of a balancing act with his nature, trying to repress The Bad Ticks while remaining authentic.

Both of them seem to want to be closer or at least have a curiosity about eachother, but time will tell if they follow through on that impulse.

[enneamage]

I'll just say it's weird that wilbur made the "being married" joke to George and shubble (even Niki was his "wife" when they were roleplaying for George's lore) . And I remember you saying that Wilbur maybe treated George like he would treat a girl he likes. I wonder if maybe George noticed it or not, because he might be used to it, but I feel like Wilbur might have done it off-camera as well. even if Wilbur had no intentions more than just being friendly he probably confused George a lot about their friendship and maybe that's why they don't spend as much time together anymore (or George just really got depressed)

When Wilbur is getting after something he's not as subtle as he wants to be, honestly. He gives himself away in the little moments where his mouth moves faster than his imagination and he just... says exactly what he's thinking. It's probably good that he's not a great liar in the long run, things could get really sketchy if he was.

George has many suitors, in the sense that lots of people attempt to win his friendship and ‘court’ him, so he doesn’t have a huge problem with being pursued in itself. The issue tends to boil down to what those individual relationships look like, both in give and take. George picks up on the subtext that Wilbur wants to lead him, but he can also be draining in a way that George’s other relationships aren’t.

I’ve been trying to not cross-contaminate the ~analysis~ but at this point I feel like I do have to bring up Dream, and the fact that both Dream and Wilbur are jealous men.

Drink it in, it’s as juicy as it sounds.

George has relaxed into Dream as a leader in a way that Wilbur would want him to relax into him. I’m saving the DNF analysis for another day but the super-shorthand is that George and Dream are very uniquely close, to the point where the delayed visa is probably the number one thing tanking his mental health right now. Because Dream and George can be so in-sync they naturally fall into low maintenance plans to just vibe together without micromanagement-- this is not the vibe when George spends time with Wilbur.

It’s the demonstrativeness, with the implication that he’s supposed to return that demonstrativeness, that freaks George out. George ultimately feels positively towards Wilbur, but being put on the spot to feel let alone perform his feelings in relationship to him? That’s too much. Watching Wilbur blow their connection up to be something bigger than he felt was weird to him, and it wasn’t affirming or comforting in the way that other people can sometimes find it.

I got my DTQK+ friend in on this question to verify and they dropped a sage line about this: Words cannot come before action for George and that's what Wilbur is in a nutshell. Wilbur tried to speedrun closeness to George and he may be paying for it now. George might not be holding onto a grudge per se, but Wilbur is on the ‘too much’ shelf right now as he’s dealing with his mental health.

George is also aware of the needs of his closest friends, and I legitimately think he’s pulling away from Wilbur in part to keep Dream from feeling cut out. On the flip side, Wilbur is awkwardly competitive and can get… strange when he sees a relationship between two people that he wants for himself. I doubt he’s good at hiding this, either, especially not from George.

Basically there’s only one possessive enmeshment parking spot in Georges life, and it’s taken.

[enneamage]

could you do an enneagram about nikibur? 🙏 I know this relationship was bad and I'm glad Niki is better now, but I'd like to know about them, their problems.

I can give my Spicy Opinion based on what I’ve deliberated about their personalities, but truth be told the two of them are further from their textbook descriptions. Wilbur is less reliable than a healthy three, and Niki has a difficult history that gives her certain reflexes on top of her predisposition. There’s also things that will probably be too specific to guess that happened behind the scenes, but I’m willing to bet that Wilbur’s push-and-pull problems became a big issue between them.

(I will do a writeup in an ask later about how Wilbur collects Nines like stickers, but that’s slightly less relevant here because of the way they met.)

I think they fucked up, together.

The blame shifts to Wilbur as time goes on, but through naivety and badly calibrated strategic thinking, they introduced the stressor of being a public couple who made their content about being a public couple. They knew what their gimmick was, and they both invoked it from the get-go—they would flirt on stream, farm awws, and then play coy when people asked about the obvious. They wanted to do the will-they-won’t-they bit and were in open competition with Carson & Kate. I think people feel morally obligated to forget how blatant they were, but they were incredibly in-your-face, and they mostly did it on purpose. They were more than just a public couple: they were straight-baiting, and they held onto it for a while because it gave them content.

And then the cons outweighed the pros. People started buying exactly what they were selling, finding them cute and investing in their personal lives. The thing is, they weren’t actually prepared to be any more demonstrative than they already were, and they both have a private streak that they wanted to hide each other behind. In a way it was an innocent failure to understand what crowds are really like, and what happens when you give a mouse a cookie. They found that they couldn’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, and at that point it was too late.

As an aside, women are competitive. They’re actually as competitive as men, but we treat the spite they treat other women with as anomalous because we think they’re supposed to be collectivistic or something. (People not noticing the double standard here is something that bothers me :P.) Needless to say, we usually don’t expect a female streamer to roll up and flirt with her Chad boyfriend without chat going nuts, because we know that people can be petty and jealous with the object of their affection. The same logic applies the other way around, but people tend to expect it less because women are meant to be more civilised or something. In the end we’re more equal than we know :P.

Niki doesn’t deserve the hate she got by any stretch of the imagination, but she got it all the same. She was heavily associated with Wilbur and had a personality people offhandedly summed up as ‘wholesome’ and ‘bland.’ She was endearing to some people, projected onto by others, and the object of vicious jealousy to (what I hope was?) a vocal minority. Not much active effort was put into seeing and understanding her as an individual, which has gotta be a mindfuck to go through, especially If you’re going through it virtually alone.

The on-paper ‘healthy’ love story between Threes and Nines is that Nines give Threes a space of unconditional and unjudgmental love. In return, Threes encourage Nines to develop themselves and shine on their own. The ideal is a feedback loop of mutual safety and encouragement, a very comfy duo. I won’t lie, I’ve seen this combination in the wild, they seem to happen more frequently than some other pairings and I can see why. This is also why I can only use the enneagram roadmap for them so much, because these two (or at least Wilbur) went off the rails.

Judging from what we’ve established about Wilbur so far, he’s good at making himself seem reliable, and then the payoff is so-so. To avoid being overly cruel I will say that Wilbur’s mental health was outstandingly bad at certain points in their timeline, so the situation has layers, but it probably activated some of his worst habits and Niki seems to have gotten the brunt of it. He liked being loved by her, and probably loving her back, but he didn’t have the mind to be her safe space consistently, which is a big part of what she needs out of a relationship.

Wilbur’s love interest persona is so distinct from the rest of him that it comes into question how real it is, and what the hell that even implies. The answers can range from ‘maybe he just gets inspired by the people he loves to behave differently’ to ‘American Psycho acting ass motherfucker.’ Threes can be a type that does romance, performs charm and builds fantasies about perfect love for them and their partner to live in. I think he pulled back when he was at his worst, maybe self-consciously hiding himself because he knew he wasn’t living up to his hype, maybe abandoning her when he wasn’t capable of meeting her needs. I don’t think he was entirely synthetic with her, because truth be told he’s not that good at lying for very long, but he did seem to make explicit and implicit promises that he went on to not keep. I remember the ”men are disappointing, actually” Niki clips, and I can tell who they’re about.

Some of the on-screen magnetism between Niki and Wilbur came from her being a cheerleader when he was feeling down. This is something that she elaborates on indirectly in her Dr. K video, she likes finding the places that she can slot into other people’s lives. Tragically for her, this is implicitly tied to the hope that they won’t leave her, which ended badly this time around. Wilbur was simple, in a way, just make the sad boy smile and make him feel better. Niki was on caretaker duty, which wouldn’t have been bad if he was able to match her energy and make things more reciprocal. Whether he was capable of returning her efforts in a way that wasn’t token or performative is up in the air, but in fairness, it looked like he had his moments.

Ultimately Wilbur couldn’t match Niki’s faithful, caring energy. Wilbur gets very self-absorbed in times of stress, and I’m actually kind of worried about what that looked like between them, because abandonment might have only been the tip of the iceberg.

I’m going to do something kind of rare and give Wilbur the benefit of the doubt on a few points. Wil, having a relatively functional sense of cause and effect, could probably put together that he was a big part of the problem whether he wanted to be or not. It was interactions with him and his audience that would wind up getting her attacked, so the simplest answer on that front was to just not do that. I also think he knew that their power gap was sketchy, and he might have been concerned about what it said about him. Ironically this might have caused him to hurt her more in the process as he was wrestling with it, but chat had her call him a nonce in their first date video, and in a roundabout way they had a point.

[enneamage]

Georgebur always gave me vibes that they wouldn't work in a relationship (Wilbur's fault, because it seems like his relationships will always be toxic in some way), but I still wonder how compatible they are???

Georgebur is in the air again since they’ve hunted ghosts recently, so this is topical.

I once used the phrase ‘Instagram boyfriends’ to describe them to a friend of mine, and they’ve been using it ever since. These two are very media friendly when they’re together, good at taking cute pictures and having very ‘romantic’ (in the adventurous sense, of course) stories of their outings. They do have a pleasant vibe when they’re together and I understand why people are attached. Again, I’m gonna struggle to not sound like a truther for this one because George really does draw out a part of Wilbur that I associate with him being romantically flirtatious.

We’re going to start re-treading some ground, as these two are another Three and Nine couple, which is a very common pairing. As has already been established, Wilbur has a thing for Nines and George is definitely one of them.  Mans is smitten, and if what I’ve been hearing is right, he’s been flirting with George for a long ass time. I have less of a hold on how George feels about him back, but he seems to think of him positively. He likes that Wilbur can take the lead while still tailoring his plans to entertain George, weaving between taking initiative and checking in to be sure that George is enjoying himself. When George has the time and energy, he likes to go along for the ride, seeking fun and intensity. Wilbur absolutely wants to be the guy to meet that need, since it brings him closer to George and lets him bring his ideas to life.

Skipping over the classic refrain where Threes are meant to help Nines shine and in return Nines provide a secure space of judgement-free acceptance, we can go straight for the neck on this one. This is a snip from an expanisve Three / Nine relationship profile, and I think it explains their faultlines the best.

These two can get into trouble when the Nine’s natural tendency to “stop and smell the flowers” starts to inhibit the Three’s ability to accomplish tasks. Nines might read the Three’s drive as pressure to perform, which causes them to (often unconsciously) resist by slowing down and sabotaging. Nines are incredibly stubborn, although they are often unaware of how they resist, delay, and even downright opposes, all of which are symptoms of their stubborn nature. From here, the Three can start to view the Nine as indecisive or unfocused, which can lead to more pushiness and greater conflict and Nines can dig in their heels, becoming almost oppositional in their attachment to their views. Additionally, both Nines and Threes avoid discussing problems or conflicts—Threes out of a desire to appear put together and Nines out of a need to keep the peace. This means that if an issue or rift is forming between these two, it’s highly likely that neither party will bring it up or take action to fix the problem. In not bringing up their issues or complains, Nines are attempting to leave the boat un-rocked, so to speak, while Threes are trying to avoid rejection or exposing their fragility. Both feel their negative feelings are better left unsaid, which can have disastrous consequences in both personal and professional relationships. With these two, it is important to schedule time for deeper check-ins to make sure all feelings and conflicts are aired and dealt with. It will also prove beneficial to slow the pace on occasion to ensure the Nine stays involved.

George is a perfectionist who struggles with motivation. His perfectionism makes the things that he wants to do difficult, and then his lack of motivation can hold him in place. George not editing his own videos is more than just a meme, it’s a pretty serious character flaw that whomever he wants to share his life with is gonna have to react to at some point, because it shows up with more than just videos.

Wilbur isn’t fully equipped to handle this side of him for an extended period of time, because he himself can also be a perfectionist that struggles with motivation. The type that Threes can act like when under stress is an unhealthy version of Nine, and Wilbur has struggled a lot with this in the past. Sprinkle in the emotional deadening that they’re both capable of and you’ve got two drowning people clinging to each other to try and stay afloat, while also refusing to admit that they’re drowning. If demotivation and apathy sets in for both of them, they’re in trouble, but it might not be visible from the outside until it’s too late.

It’s not a coincidence that there are aspects to both of them that seem to disappear into something smoother when they’re around each other—those parts kind of need to go away in order for them to work. Wilbur has a side that needs accommodation and comfort from his partners, asking them to lift his mood when he’s feeling low (and not worried about losing them.) George becomes slightly more callous as people get close to him, no longer concerned about being abrasive since they’ve got rapport. These two things contradict, hard.

These two are best when they go on ‘dates’, one off instances of hanging out together and doing things instead of an ongoing entangled ‘domestic’ life where they’re more likely to experience the sides of each other that they're not equipped (or willing) to handle.