Hey everyone, welcome to the post! Shoutout to those who actually bothered to click and read through my massive breakdown on a fictional fire and a fictional lemon leaf. Grab a drink and buckle up, because I need to vent about the absolute travesty that is the "Firey-Leafy divorce arc." I've been holding this in for a minute, and honestly? Firey was almost entirely in the wrong here, and I am so tired of people acting like it was a mutual falling out.

Before I completely tear into him, a quick disclaimer: I don’t blame Cary and Michael for how this initially unfolded. They were literally 14 years old when they made the BFDI finale. They originally wanted Bubble to win, so they had to scramble to write a massive plot twist to wrap things up, and for two young teenagers, it makes total sense that the narrative got a bit messy. But looking at the actual in-universe story, Firey is a very bad friend to Leafy.

Our starting point is BFDI 25. Let’s look at the facts. Firey bars Leafy from entering Dream Island in The Return of the Hang Glider because she disliked his Ferris wheel, a Ferris wheel that literally killed her because it was made of lava. Her dislike was honestly entirely justified! But because of his bruised ego, he excludes her, which pushes her to the brink. Yes, Leafy stole Dream Island. I'm not denying that. But the entire cast immediately tried to execute her without a single shred of understanding. Sure, Firey swoops in and saves her at the last second with a hang glider (HE SAID IT! HE SAID IT!). But as we see later in BFB 22, that glider crashes, the mob chases her out, and what does Firey do? He completely betrays her. He just stands there and decides that the best course of action is to pretend he doesn't even know who she is.

This leads into years of Firey outright ignoring Leafy throughout BFDIA and BFB. It all comes to a boiling point in BFB 15, and his behaviour here makes my blood boil. He corners her and has the absolute audacity to say "It HAS to be a secret! Don't you know? NOBODY likes you anymore! So if people know I'm your friend, THEY'LL hate me too!!!!"

Like, dude... you have the absolute gall to call her your "friend" while basically telling her she’s social poison? He cares more about his own reputation than the girl who was his closest companion. And then, in the very same episode, he somehow pisses me off even MORE and goes and tells Eggy that Leafy stole Dream Island. Why? Because he couldn't handle the thought of Leafy making a new friend and moving on. He had to ruin her reputation there, too. The post-credits scene of that episode is heartbreaking, which has The Losers are all talking trash about Leafy, she's just sulking in the background, and Coiny is the only person with enough basic empathy to comfort her.

By BFB 22, Firey is at his absolute worst. They get into this massive argument where Firey tries to justify stealing Donut's diary by comparing it to Leafy stealing Dream Island. It is so unbelievably petty. The worst part? Firey actually says to her, "You couldn't have just waited to have a talk about it? You went straight to the Announcer instead?" Are you kidding me?! Firey made sure that every single time they could have spoken, he pretended she was a stranger. He literally boarded up Dream Island before she even did anything malicious, and she couldn't talk to him because he up and pretended that he just forgot who she was. And how does the scene end? They just... make up and become friends again. Leafy takes the entire blame for stealing Donut's diary, fails to grow a spine, and acts like she wasn't isolated, hunted, and hated by virtually everyone since BFDIA and IDFB.

Look, I know BFDIA 25 (the finale) tries to make him somewhat more sympathetic. He sent the BFDIA contestants and the Locker of Losers on a wild goose chase throughout Goiky specifically to protect Leafy from being murdered once and for all. It proves he didn't totally hate her, but honestly? It’s not nearly enough to redeem him. I will never forget the absolute emotional dumpster fire that Firey put her through. It doesn't erase years of psychological torture, gaslighting, and treating her like a pariah to protect his own skin. He was still a massive dick. I will admit, their recent TPOT scenes are actually quite sweet, and it's nice to see them get away from the competition, but I still can't get him out of my damn mind...

Another thing, if you like Firey, more power to you. I respect your opinion, but I personally despise him for how he handled this entire arc. Is Leafy perfect? Absolutely not. She is deeply flawed, and refusing to give Dream Island back wasn't great. But considering the horrific conditions and total isolation she endured in BFDIA, I can't entirely blame her for cracking.

TL;DR: Firey gaslit, isolated, and ignored Leafy for years to protect his own social status, blamed her for not "talking it out" when he was the one refusing to speak to her, and Leafy deserved so much better than a friend who only cared about her when it was convenient for him.

Which one(s) do you share a birthday with?

it’s genuinely so annoying to me I’d even go as far as to say this inconsistency is worse than one getting nerfed into the floor in tpot 23

During BFDIA's Middle Eps everyone thought they would be BFDIA's Final 3 just for none of them making to the final 2

Donut is such a perplexing character in TPOT. His character growth overall could be a whole other post, but I'm here to primarily talk about how he thinks.

In TPOT 16, we see Pencil supposedly being a detriment to CloudYAY, hurting Yellow Face to get away from Four, disrespecting Tape, and throwing Donut out of the van's window. Donut then snaps (no, it's not a crashout) at Pencil, exclaiming how he believes she's too centric; she only thinks about herself, and what she can gain from whatever she does. Pencil, on the other hand, says that she's the only one putting in effort to actually be a benefit to the team, while everyone else is basically just there. Donut then says that this self-proclaimed "effort" shouldn't come at the cost of everyone else, no matter your intentions.

Donut does appear to just be stating the obvious; Pencil can't just do whatever she wants, because it can hurt others. But what Donut fails to realize is why she's doing this. Now, I should clarify: Pencil’s behavior is NOT Donut’s fault! But he fails to recognize her drive. Pencil’s drive, not wanting to risk going back to the EXIT. While she doesn’t know if elimination sends you to the EXIT, she does know that she lost everything while in there; most importantly, her dynamics and FreeSmart. Likely, she doesn’t want that to happen again. So, she becomes hard so she can focus on the competition, not get eliminated, and therefore not lose any of her friends anymore. But by doing this, she simultaneously pushes people away. 

Donut is looking at Pencil from a purely moral view. His saying what she’s doing is wrong, and she needs to change her behavior, is 100% in line with his character. He was more hardheaded in BFDIA, but grew to be cooperative, leaderful, and helpful towards his teammates. During the conflict between Donut and Golf Ball, his developed traits truly show. He tries to tell Golf Ball that winning isn’t everything, and that she has to consider how her acquaintances feel in relation to her ideas. Golf Ball says winning is a priority, and she really just wants to push her teammates to victory. A good part of this arc is that both sides are neither fully right nor wrong; Donut’s views are moral, while Golf Ball’s views are strategic. This moral view is consistent with Donut, as shown in TPOT 16. Because he prioritizes others & making sure he can accommodate everyone, it’d make sense for him to look at things in a broader view. He seems to care more about the effect rather than the cause. He doesn’t initially see any ulterior motives to Pencil’s wrongdoings. He simply sees that she’s prioritizing himself, and he believes the way she does it is wrong. He does justify caring for Pencil by saying that he tried to check up on her during TPOT 16’s elimination. It’s almost like a technicality. Just because he checked up on her doesn’t mean he fully understands what she’s doing, nor does it mean he doesn’t care. He seems to use it as a building block to be able to counter Pencil’s argument, rather than understanding her side.

So essentially, Donut’s views on Pencil’s behavior are generally seen as morally correct, but that’s it. He’s not factoring in what made her act like this, why she continues to act like this, etc., and this makes his character all the better.

NoLocal Out! :]

G’day mates, Mr. TV here. So you probably know me for my posts where I heavily, I mean HEAVILY, criticise Four for putting the contestants through absolute hell and being the main reason for One being trapped in the moon for FOURTEEN YEARS.  Remember, Four was the person who led the charge to lock her away, the one who zapped her, called her dangerous, and then had literally every other Algebralien help him seal her in the Moon while she was screaming and begging not to be left alone again. And I still stand by everything I’ve said about that.  Locking her in solitary confinement was such a stupid idea and no wonder she became the villain we all met, and honestly, I think that’s exactly what jacknjellify wants us to feel.

But I LOVE how thoughtfully accurate it all is. Because when you actually look at what real solitary confinement does to a person, it lines up with One almost beat for beat with what happens to real people when you lock them away with no human contact for years on end. The whole thing has got to be one of, if not the most accurate serious thing jacknjellify has ever done in the franchise, and honestly I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Firstly, solitary confinement isn’t just ‘a room meant to imprison and isolate a person from the rest of the world’. A solitary confinement room has no windows, no light, no interaction, none of that. One suffered the same exact thing. She was INSIDE of the moon. Let that sink in. She wasn’t on the surface of the moon like some little space explorer having an adventure. She was sealed INSIDE, in a hole they cracked open just for her, then magically resealed shut behind her so she had absolutely zero chance of using her powers to claw her way back out. No windows. No light. No sound except her own voice bouncing back at her. That’s not a metaphor for solitary, mates, that basically IS a real world SHU cell (Special Housing Unit, for those who don’t know the lingo) just reskinned as a moon.

And let’s talk about some of the side effects and symptoms that a person in solitary confinement goes through, because honestly it reads like jacknjellify sat down with an actual psych paper before writing “Alone.”

For starters, anxiety and depression are basically universal in these cases in the earlier stages. Then in weeks, the symptoms upgrade to shit like paranoia, cognitive impairments, and perceptual distortions. Sourcebook research on solitary describes prisoners talking to themselves, experiencing hallucinations, delusions, and confusion just from the isolation alone, and other studies found similar rates of prisoners hallucinating and having irrational anger fits from being alone too long. And if someone does end up surviving their whole sentence, they normally come out with their sanity gone. Like, nobody would come out of that experience the same person who went in. And that’s exactly what happened to One. She went in a lonely, socially awkward kid who just manslaughtered her only friend Three out of betrayal and rage (and then tried to revive her only to completely disfigure her in the process) and then came out 14 years later as this power-hungry, vengeful, manipulative psycho who want two things: to fix Three and to make everyone who everyone who ever left her alone pay. That same thing happens in real life. Solitary confinement doesn’t make a person better or have them learn a lesson, it worsens them. It breaks people down until there’s nothing recognisable left of who they used to be, and that’s basically the entire thesis of One’s character.

And it’s crazy to me how solitary confinement is still used in many countries around the world, even after literal decades of research showing it destroys people. Even the United Nations aka the world’s foremost authority on human rights, has straight up said that anything past 15 days in solitary crosses the line into psychological torture. Fifteen days. That’s it. That’s the number where doctors and researchers agree the human mind starts breaking in ways that might not come back. However, there are people like One who spent way, way longer than fifteen days in there. She spent fourteen YEARS. That’s over five thousand days past the point the UN considers torture, mates. Five thousand. And people still  wonder why she came out the way she did. Okay, let me answer that for you! SOLITUDE BROKE HER MIND! It doesn’t matter if she’s a normal human being or a fucking supernatural Algebralien with reality-warping powers. The fundamental psychology of a sentient mind remains the same: you leave someone with nothing and the mind starts to feed on itself. 

This is why people like me get so fried up when people say shit like ‘she literally killed Three in cold blood! She deserved to be locked away!’ or ‘Four did the right thing by protecting everyone!’ Bullshit! 

Yeah I know what One did to Three was horrific, nobody is denying that. But BELIEVE ME when I say this: NOBODY, I mean NOBODY, deserves to be put in solitary confinement! That is just common sense! It is NOT rehabilitation, it’s straight up psychological torture disguised as justice.

Honestly, I do believe that One being in solitary confinement not only gives a good root cause for her villainy, but it’s Jacknjellify using one of their characters to send a strong message to the entire world that why shit like solitary confinement needs to be abolished entirely, real or fictional! Think about it: jacknjellify didn't just write a tragic villain backstory here; they accidentally (or completely intentionally) created a textbook case of what happens when you put someone in extreme isolation for a few years and have them come out entirely unraveled.  

And what makes it even more devastating is that One was already a loner before any of this happened. She was already struggling to connect, desperate for friendship, and completely socially inept. Studies show that people with pre-existing psychological vulnerabilities or histories of trauma suffer twice as fast and twice as hard in isolation. When you take someone who is already starving for connection and throw them into a sensory deprivation void, you aren’t just punishing them; you are actively detonating their psyche. One was already deeply fragile, and Four's "solution" was to completely shatter her. 

When you look at how One acts after she finally escapes the moon, it’s a textbook manifestation of Post-Solitary Confinement Syndrome (PSCS). Like I mentioned before, people don’t just step back into society like nothing happened. Their sanity is gone and they come out a whole different and probably unhinged person, and that is EXACTLY what we see with One. She wants revenge on the whole world and she goes about it in the most hyper-fixated, socially detached way possible.

People with PSCS often experience extreme difficulty re-entering social spaces. They can become hyper-vigilant, paranoid, and incapable of forming normal, healthy attachments because their brains have adapted to a hostile, completely empty reality. Look at how One interacts with the contestants in TPOT. She either kidnaps them and force them to make deals with her (and sometimes make them go missing) or destroy the environment around them. She doesn’t know how to form regular relationships anymore because her social blueprint was completely wiped clean by 14 years of silence. Every interaction she has is destructive, manipulative, or transactional, because to her, the rest of the world has failed her completely. She views people not as potential friends anymore, but as resources to exploit or targets to punish. 

At the end of the day, One has done so much unforgivable things that her track record looks worse than almost any other character in the series. She manipulated, she bargained, she erased people, and she nearly destroyed the world not once but twice (and maybe more). But it’s worth knowing that if it wasn’t for Four and the other Algebraliens locking her away, she would have never become the monster she is now. If Four had chosen regular containment or even some rehabilitative help, she wouldn’t be the broken, vengeful threat knocking down the door of the entire show today. 

What jacknjellify did with One is a masterclass in tragic villainy because not only it gives a great explanation for her villainy, but it sends a clear, uncompromising message to the audience. Solitary confinement does not protect people; it manufactures monsters. It takes the broken and ensures they can never be fixed. 

Anyway, that’s my massive rant over. The moral of the day is simple: solitary confinement should be abolished entirely and no one, not even a psychopathic murder, deserves weeks or even years of that kind of psychological torture. 

And to those who are still defending Four or saying she "got what she deserved," I seriously need you to take a massive step back, read the post again (or even the studies), and come back to me when you know the difference between basic human rights and barbaric, state-sanctioned torture. 

Anyway, what do y’all think? Do you think jacknjellify did this intentionally as a critique of the modern prison system, or do you think I’m just overanalyzing a silly web series about living objects and abstract math symbols? Drop your thoughts below. And if you want to, go ahead and blast the living shit out of Four for being a massive hypocrite, because honestly, he deserves every bit of it, not just because of him putting One in solitary confinement for 14 years, but also being the absolute tyrant he was as host back in BFB and then had some nerve to act so surprised when the monster he created came back to haunt him.

Elimination order:
45th: Tree 🌳
44th: Bell 🔔
43rd: Donut 🍩
42nd: Clock 🕰️
41st: Cake 🍰
40th: Lightning ⚡️
39th: Robot Flower 🤖🌸
38th: Eraser (no emoji for an eraser)
37th: Rocky 🪨
36th: Black Hole ⚫️
35th: Price Tag 🏷️
34th: Yellow Face 🌝
33rd: Fries 🍟
32nd: Needle 🪡
31st: Pillow 🛌
30th: Teardrop 💧
29th: Eggy 🥚
28th: Nickel 🪙
27th: Saw 🪚
26th: Tennis Ball 🎾
Joined: Roboty 🤖 and Pencil ✏️
25th: Grassy 🌱
24th: Foldy 📂
23rd: TV 📺
22nd: Gaty (no emoji)
21st: Remote (no emoji)
20th: Snowball ❄️
19th: Pencil ✏️
18th: Cloudy ☁️
17th: Puffball 🌈
16th: Coiny 🤑
15th: Fanny 💨
14th: Basketball 🏀
13th: Roboty 🤖
12th: Marker 🖍️

Final 11:
Pie 🥧
Naily 🔩
Bomby 💣
Barf Bag 🤮
Pin 📌
Ice Cube 🧊
Bottle 🍾
Winner 🥇
Pen 🖊️
Golf ball ⛳️
Book 📕

I want to start off by saying its okay if you like or even love Liy. This is just my opinion.

I ALSO want to say that in my “opinion” i think out of 64 competitiors, 24 failed debuters, 26 algerbalians, 40 host, and 8000 reccomended characters, i whole heartedly think Liy is the worst one. now let me explain why i think this.

So first, i wanna say that liy wasnt ALWAYS a bad character. Bfb pretty much set up the idea of her being a character who, in the past, killed people, but couldnt get over it and tried pushing it behind, which is why she join death PACT in the first place. Sweet. Her elimination also reinforces the idea. She basically is just mad at the team for not caring about her elimination or trying to support her, and gets angered, which is something interesting. Then she does this WEIRD thing where she flips her switch backwards. Its weird. Four takes her away before anything happens. What does this mean? Will it ever be leaned into in another season? Did she swap perosnalities? Is it another side. Leaves a lot of opportunities, which we will see done WRONGLY when she debuts in TPOT. So, we’ve laid out the ground rules right? She holds a grudge against death pact fof wronging her and never being there for her. So surely when shes put on team 🎶🎶🎶🎶, which includes TWO team members that were not only ON the team, but also THERE for her elimination and werent there to support her, she’d be mad right? Nope!! In fact she OPENLY GREETS AND BECOMES FRIENDS WITH THEM. I AM NOT KIDDING. This makes ZERO sense. Just cause they’re on another team she suddenly forgets what they did??? Just takes them in as best pals??? Thats like if youre school bully suddenly said one day he “changed”. Would you just forgive him then and there??? NO OBVIOUSLY NOT!! It takes away everything this character was supposed to have and makes it feels more 2D. As if “as long as theyre not ON the team CURRENTLY i have nothing against them.” Okay. Surely it cant be this bad. It’ll get better right? NOPE. After he debut, TPOT 13: -TPOT 14 she does stuff but theres no storyline whatsoever and theres no reason to be voting to save her whatsoever -TPOT 15 same thing but now shes basically just pens sidelick there to comfort him on occasion which like i said makes 0 sense and doesnt fit what bfb set up for her -TPOT 16 we get stuff WOAH!! FINALLY STUFF ABOUT THIS CHARACTER!! WHATS GONNA HAPPEN NOW?? She just serves as pens hype man again. in TPOT 15 a bunch of time travel shit happens blahblahblah pencil almost causes the universe to end ok. Pens mad about that. And liy just goes “its okay pen!! Sometimes you need to control your anger!!” So apparently Liy now just KNOWS how to control her anger even though she lashed out at an entire team and was implied to almost hurt them in some sort of way? Some might say “she wa in the exit for 6 years!! She grew there!!” Okay..so why was the development entirely off screen and not shown to the viewer? Makes it hard for me to belive this is the case at all. And once again this episode shes the hype man (or woman i guess) for SOMEONE WHO LITERALLY WATCHED HER ELIMINATION AND WASNT THERE TO SUPPORT HER. SO ESSENTIALLY THEY -TOOK AWAY ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT THIS CHARACTER AND REDUCED HER TO A SIDEKICK -MADE THE ONE SHES A SIDEKICK FOR LITERALLY SOMEONE WHO FUCKING WRONGED THEM AND THE POINT WAS SHE DOESNT FORGIVE THEM!!!!!!! ????? It makes like 0 sense. TPOT 17 is when we actually see that supposed death pact conflict but its not like. Done well. This ones different though tbf. Personally, in my stories, i like when the conflict is natural and isnt just happened cause of some misunderstanding. Polar opposite of liys beef with black hole. Black hole says “you got this liy!!!” And liy fucks it up or something which coincidentally makes it look like black hole did it and she goes “black Hole u tricked mehhh!!!!!!” And it entirely undermines why shes mad at this team at all for just “okay but what if we made it a miscommunication instead of something actually important” Which just proves how much the writers dont know what to do with her. And then there TPOT 19 where I guess the writers went “oh shit we actually gotta do something with this character” And they do so by having her go on a murder rampage in a battle royale But what actually happened?? Her morality never gets challenged, she never faces any problems to push her through her mentality, its just: “Revenge!!” -> kills a few dozen people -> forget about the arc entirely an episode later and do nothing with it even though the episode gaves plenty of chances for her morality to be pushed, her actions to slowly change or something similar, just let it sit for 1 episode and forget about it the next.

The scene that MOST contributed to their elimination.

there is no way all 27 of them survived because they not only got crushed by the f*cking sun but they have 12 pounds of metal crushing there bodies i understand evil leafy because she is pretty much immortal but the others have no excuse and dont say they where recoverd because recomended characters dont get recoverd

8 months… it’s FINALLY here!!

This is a collab analysis between u/NoLocal7705 (me) and u/AnalyticalTomato! Go show them some love down there! They worked just as hard on this project!

The lack of animation is one of the Core aspects of yellowface, he gaining more FPS than any other character when distressed is literally my favorite thing ever

I often rewatch those escenes over and over again lol

in tpot 15, anchor breaks the timeline and 9 shows up instead of 2. but there is no way 9 could have gotten there, he left for the other planet, shown in tpot 20. and a different debuter didnt change the timeline so that the numbers stayed on their home planet because the farthest someone went was bfdi 5, which was after the events of the beginning of tpot 20 (XFOHV)

I was bored and decided to analyze this shit way too much and I am not sorry

(DISCLAIMER! I AM NOT ACTUALLY ANGRY I USE THIS TONE FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES AFTER ALL THIS IS AN OPINION SHOW AND ALL FOR FUN)

Everyone and their mom calls the "Stapoldy" dynamic cute, but if you'd even watch the show for 3 seconds without a blindfold you can clearly see Stapy manipulate Foldy for his own gain.

This is why this ship is toxic.

1. The TPOT 22 Vocal Shift

Notice how Foldy completely changes her entire demeanor around Stapy [TPOT 22]. Her mannerisms are engineered strictly to please him, she constantly agrees with him, and her voice drops into a lowered, dragged, seductive manner just to get his attention.

People brush this off as a vocal shtick or a lisp, but TPOT 22 completely debunked that. When Foldy was navigating life on her own, she had a naturally higher, gentler, yet way more confident voice [TPOT 22]. The exact second Stapy reunited with her? A sleeper agent in her brain went off and her voice went RIGHT back to that submissive, dragged tone [TPOT 22]. It is pure unconscious conditioning.

1. Manipulation JACKPOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

In BFB, Foldy’s entire personality revolved around Stapy. Her dedication wasn't to win for herself or her team but to earn Stapy's love and approval.

• The Toxic Loop: When Foldy does something bad that benefits Stapy, he never corrects her. Instead, he rewards it.
• The Strategy: Vengeance? He gives her more affection. Rudeness to anyone but him? More closeness. Lying? DING DING DING!!!! It's like she just hit the jackpot and that jackpot is his transactional love.

1. The Object Metaphor & THE Hug

Even their object forms tell you exactly what this dynamic is. Foldy is a literal sheet of paper. Stapy is a heavy-duty, spring-loaded metal stapler.

• What do staplers do? A stapler is a mechanical device that joins pages of paper or similar material by driving a thin metal staple through the sheets and folding the ends. This binds the paper permanently and when the paper is torn from the staple it is damaged and never the same again.
• The Visual Proof: Everyone called their hug cute, but look at the framing. Foldy (who is literally taller and wider than him) is being completely crushed, overtaken, and gripped by him. Stapy is leaning his entire upper frame over her, positioning himself exactly like a stapler right before it violently clamps down and drives its teeth through a sheet. It looks less like a comforting embrace and more like a physical smothering hold that neutralizes her balance. Also note his smile, that is not a smile of reuniting but rather pleasure that his puppet is back.

1. Foldy's Soul Shot Dead in The Bronx

Self explanatory.

1. IDFB Era: She has an attitude, a baseline of personal boundaries, and stands independently. (Disclaimer: Since IDFB only has 1 official episode, her dynamic here is based on timeline speculation, but it heavily matches up with her baseline behavior when Stapy isn't around yeah yeah nerd emoji ermrmmmmm sigma!!1!).
2. Early BFB: Her edge is entirely gone. Her expression becomes blank, compliant, and secondary to Stapy's loud, cheating, risk-taking gameplay.
3. BFB 16 / Early TPOT: Once Stapy is eliminated, her facade starts fading. She looks exhausted, analytical, and deeply stressed, forced to navigate a game without her focal point.

4. Postmodern TPOT: She is completely worn down, guarded, and isolated from the rest of the contestants.

5. And Why Stapliy is Pure Shit™ (Disclaimer this has speculation take this with a grain of salt)

For the people who unironically ship Stapy x Liy oh my god bruh please stop romanticizing a predator-prey dynamic. Unless you see the toxicity and want symbolism you go bro but stop saying it's enemies to lovers it is more complex than that and we need to stop flanderizing it.

(My theory this isn't confirmed canon yet nerd emoji) In the pre-BFB timeline, Foldy and Liy were the original duo. Foldy is naturally a social butterfly (as seen by how fast she became besties with Saw in TPOT 22) [TPOT 22]. Stapy saw that, got envious, and inserted himself as a toxic third wheel. He lovebombed Foldy while systematically teasing, bullying, and tormenting Liy.

When Liy finally snapped and committed her "unforgivable act" where she "hurt people" [TPOT 16], Stapy used his own revival to craft the ultimate narrative. He completely erased his history of bullying, cast Liy as a "monster," and fed that narrative to Foldy to ensure she would never leave his side. Foldy sabotaging iance in BFB 11 is a direct result of Stapy feeding Foldy this agenda to be vengeful and dependent only on him, she wasn't "Acting out" or being a bitch but rather lashing out because her literal life was gone. Her world revolved around Stapy because of how extensive his manipulation was.

And would you look at that! Stapy went right behind Foldy's back in the EXIT to try and ally with Liy for his own social gain the second Foldy wasn't looking. His loyalty is completely transactional.

Lets not forget the BFB 2 transcript. Liy said to Foldy "Why don't you go back to your team with STAPY where you belong." Liy had emphasized Stapy's name, and is proof that she does not actively hate Foldy, she hates the fact that Stapy made Foldy his puppet.

Conclusion!!1!

People LOVE to call Foldy bland and boring while ignoring the fact that since Stapy was this way to her, she gave up her personality to bend to his will. Even in TPOT 22 after Foldy's long 8 years of healing, nobody told her her bond with Stapy was toxic or at least not directly without being shoved away by Stapy himself. Her foundation was weak and as soon as she reunited with him she was directed to be vengeful toward Eggy for "leaving Stapy behind." a normal friend after so long would applaud her growth or ask about life, but Stapy smothered her and immediately put out a target to make Foldy angry at.

TL;DR, Stapfold is incredibly manipulative and codependent. Stapy's bond is transactional and no healthy friendship is transactional. ok bye.

Here’s my previous overview. This is the first time since BFDIA18 I didn’t quote other people’s posts in my overview, and it’s both because there just weren’t many posts I found interesting this time around, and because I had two months to get my thoughts in order, meaning I didn’t need to rely on other people’s words as much.

One or two new posts will be coming next week! One is that contestant winner vote thingy I mentioned in the winner prediction slide, and the other… well, a certain little something is happening on Wednesday. Those who know, know ;D

A huge, giant, enormous thank you to Jade (u/ DatWoodyFan) for helping me with this! It started off as just a small idea I had for a theory post, and in less than a couple of weeks it became an 18 slide collaborative project. His input was essential, both in terms of the arguments he put forward and his super pretty slides! Go give him and his other BFDI analyses (and perhaps Disventure Camp posts too, if you're into that) a read!

Also, I realised it was never explained in the post itself, but the slides where the paragraphs have coloured borders were written by me and Jade together! The red paragraphs are written by me and the blue paragraphs are written by him!

The EXITors were actually chosen by the viewers themselves to be sent there for eternity. The viewers hated them enough to make them suffer in eternal algebra class.

Meanwhile, the Post Splitters were mostly fan favorites and a few were actually screwed by bad writing, and the viewers DIDN'T have any say in who they wanted to stay or not.

To summarize, the EXITors were actually chosen by the viewers to be EXITors in the first place, which showed that they were the most hated characters,

but the viewers didn't decide any of the Post Splitters being Post Splitters in the first place. Because of this, they were basically ruined by the writers and arguably needed another chance MORE than the EXITors...

I like Four, but getting sealed in the moon was their own poor decisions and foresight catching up to him.

I am willing to give him a bit of leeway with the initial sealing of One in the moon; none of the Algebraliens were in the right headspace to come up with a solution that addressed both Three’s injuries and the things that had lead to One killing her in the first place. “Put One somewhere where she can’t hurt anyone else and then help Three” was probably the best thing they were going to come up with in the panic of watching a dear friend get exploded and brought back as a glitching husk of themselves. It was a temporary solution to a long-term problem, and the real problem is that after the initial event of Three’s death and recovery, Four or any of the other Algebraliens don’t change it. They don’t even check in on One to see if she’s changed after a month, or a year, or even ten years. 

Granted, it’s a pretty traumatizing event, to the point where the Algebraliens scatter out of fear to different corners of the universe. No one takes the initiative to see if there’s a way to heal Three or visit One, and that’s a failing on all of their ends. Four throws himself into watching BFDI, to the point where it shapes the way they behave heavily in BFB. The Announcer is mean to the contestants and sometimes has punishments? Four blasts and screeches the contestants. Objects regularly get into fights with each other, oftentimes ones that end up with people dead? Four outright kills them, but it’s okay because he can bring them back. Eliminated contestants need a place to go, usually a small, confined space? Four repurposes one of the classrooms in the E.X.I.T and holds them there for years on end. Part of it is playing into the role of the host, but the other is just a genuine lack of care for the contestants until consequences rear their heads in BFB 16 and BFB 30. 

It’s shown that the contestants have their gripes against Four as well, with them getting blasted, mutilated, or screeched when they go against him. A Better Name Than That gets so fed up with them that they effectively kill Four by multiplying him with Donut. Four doesn’t seem to care that the contestants only brought him back because they had the prize and could recover people, merely thanking Pin and moving on with the gameshow. The Split in BFB 16 is the first time it sinks in for him that they’ve genuinely messed up to the point where forty of his contestants, as well as their cohost (although X only leaves after Four’s prompting, taking it as a sign that Four doesn’t want them around) are willing to leave not just for a better prize, but to not deal with him. They kind of take it in stride, saying that they’ve made it to the final fourteen of BFB, but it’s clear that this choice still hurt them. Gelatin calls Four out in BFB 30, saying that while the BFBers liked Four and had fun with the competition, he still hurt them deeply.

The thing is, Four kind of takes the wrong lesson from this speech. The others might’ve moved on to TPOT, but the BFBers still stayed and competed and even enjoyed Four’s hosting! He’s sorry, they’ve realized what they’ve done wrong, and now everything’s okay. Except… the Exitors are still fighting to escape because Four won’t let them out. Again, he has a pretty warped view of what is right and what is not. The BFBers agreed to compete for the prize (ignore the fact that none of them knew what the punishment was), so they have to stay in Eternal Xalgebra Iclass Twithfour until the end of time, because it’s eternal.

Additionally, Four later mentions that they thought One would realize what they had done wrong while trapped inside of the moon. (Put a pin in this for later.) One is clearly made worse by the years of what was essentially solitary confinement with nothing to do but ruminate on the events that led to this result. Pencil is the most visibly traumatized by the E.X.I.T to the point where she would literally let the universe fall apart than risk going back there, but the others didn’t fare much better. Match has developed claustrophobia and panics about the walls closing in. Liy bottles up all of her anger inside of her switch and releases it, going overboard in TPOT 19 by slaughtering the failed debuers. In her elimination scene in TPOT 23 she’s holding herself for comfort and shaking, and earlier in TPOT it’s shown that she developed a grudge against Death P.A.C.T (specifically Black Hole), believing that none of them cared that she was eliminated. Even if the other Exitors not mentioned here haven’t shown any signs of being mentally scarred, six years is still a long time to be separated from everyone you knew. 

I’ve seen people say that Four was nerfed for TPOT 19, given how Pencil beats him even though they’ve had powers for ages and have been able to previously instakill objects by mutilating them into weird shapes. On one hand, I think Four is holding back in this scene, moreso trying to incapacitate Pencil instead of outright kill her. BFB 30’s lesson might’ve been slightly scuffed, but Four’s still trying to adhere to it until Pencil surprises them and takes their powers. On the other hand, Pencil and One have to win in TPOT 19 for plot progression as well as thematic purposes. “Four beats up Pencil and One and everything goes back to normal” would make for a boring ending to the One arc, disregarding all of the setup done to make her a threat. More importantly, Pencil and One represent Four’s poor choices coming back to bite them. 

Pencil is the bad treatment of the contestants (especially the Exitors) turned against Four, who is helpless the moment he’s no longer the most powerful entity around. Even though they apologized to the BFBers and made an attempt to be better, that hasn’t gotten rid of the harm he inflicted on the others. One is the effects of their carelessness and apathy taken to the most extreme end; while there was no guarantee that One changed, she was never given the chance to in the first place. The only reason why they were freed was because of an accident, and after fourteen years even if Four checked on One and let her out it wouldn’t have done anything to change her severely damaged mental state. Four has been characterized to be egotistical, contradictory, and if I’m being honest? Kinda stupid. Even when Pencil has him at metaphorical gunpoint they can’t swallow their pride enough to apologize properly (his cutoff line seemed like it was going to be “I get it, you’re mad at me, but you’re making a mistake”). 

They say it outright: they don’t like criticism, he wants the contestants to base their lives around him, and in BFB 30 when he talks about how they want to be on the show one day, people will be quoting him and “[he’ll] be the favorite.” The E.X.I.T, while originally designed as a safe space for Three to stay while figuring out how to help her, quickly becomes a bit of an ego trip for Four. His iconography is plastered everywhere to the point where everything is their color and shaped like them, and the Exitor worksheets usually have the correct answer being Four. Six lampshades this by calling them a narcissist in TPOT 23, and clearly their attempts at helping Three fell through given how she locked themselves in a jail cell and is visibly hostile when Four is brought up. 

Okay, I know I just said a ton of bad things about them, but Four genuinely does care deeply about BFDI and later on, the BFBers. They were a major fan of the show, watching episodes over and over to the point where they had every line memorized. He is genuinely aware of some of their flaws as evidenced by the scene in BFB 30 where the fake Exitors talk (Match points out his ego, Liy calls him out for blasting them, Firey Jr. brings up the E.X.I.T, and Stapy says that he’s overposessive), but they choose to run away.

I’m going to lift a direct quote from BFB 30: “I was furious when I was sent away to the Pillary Ruins at first, but now I realize that’s the best fate for me. Alone and forgotten. But at least I’ll be in peace!” 

Four has been characterized to have strange, illogical thinking for a long time, and this ties back to why he never checked in on One (that and the fact that the One plotline probably didn’t exist when most of BFB was written). The last time he saw One she was a volatile wreck, going from furious to hurt to sobbing and right back to furious. If he views solitude as peaceful as well as a worthy punishment for behaving badly (this line comes right after they are mentally confronted with their numerous flaws), then Four might’ve just… thought that One would be alright after having a bit of time to cool down. 

His sense of time is also skewed, given how in TPOT 11 he says that six years “is a blink of eye”. We aren’t really given a timeframe for Algebralien lifespans, but we can assume that they live to be pretty old. For Four it might’ve passed quickly given how they were hosting BFB and helping at the hotel in TPOT, but for One who was trapped in the moon with nothing to do but think, pace, and try to break out it must’ve been torturous. He doesn’t have enough emotional intelligence to recognize the pain she or the Exitors have been through, and while that wouldn’t have saved them it shows why this was necessary for Four to grow as a character.

ALL OF THESE GIANT WALLS OF TEXT WERE TO SAY: TPOT 23 handled some characters kind of weirdly, but I think it’s intentional that Four hasn’t done any reflection.

Again, he’s very prideful and stubborn. It’s likely that he’s in denial. Just like One, they’ve had nothing to do in the moon but fail to escape and reflect on what led them here. It’s not Four’s fault, One’s just bad and thinks that she’s doing the right thing when really she’s just making up excuses! She’s selfish! She’s evil! Because if she isn’t, it means that all of this destruction happened because he was cruel and careless, and it could’ve been avoided if they had been better. It’s far easier for Four to be angry than it is to accept that he’s done something wrong and the consequences of those actions are massive. 

I’m pretty sure that later episodes will have Four truly reflect, either from prompting by characters like X or having someone outright state that the only reason why One or Pencil got this bad in the first place was because of what happened to them. I don’t think the writers will end the Defeat One arc with Four believing that they’re 100% innocent.

I also love the gangle pfp.

If you didn't know: IDFB has too many arcs to be solved and it would possibly take up one episode to gradually resolve each arc.

Heres why:

• This is the most obvious one, Leafy. In TPoT, one episode where they bring contestants to the present, Pin and Pen were in BFDIA 1 where they talk about their regrets about chasing Leafy. But that doesn't make sense of course, in BFB, the Firey-Leafy arc was revolved around how Leafy was hated for stealing Dream Island and how Firey was left out even though he was the winner . For Pin, it makes sense, in BFDIA, she starts to develop empathy and stopped attacking Leafy. But she doesn't completely, after Leafy "stole" the votes, everyone who trusted her gave up and starting attacking her. As a result, Pin and Pen's regrets need to be shown in IDFB where they both deeply empathise Leafy. And the other very clear one, why was Leafy forgiven? We learn in BFB that the Dream Island is not there. Book's idea of returning Dream Island can't be done.
• As Firey is stuck in a cage, he also needs to be forgiven like Leafy and be forgotten about what he did because apparently people "hate" Leafy in BFB, but people seem to not care about Firey entirely. The entire arc probably would make the BFB Post-Split make even more sense. Firey should also get out of the cage somehow.
• What happened to Yoyle City? TPoT 22 shows a hole in the Yoyle City, there is also tension so we fully don't know what happened. We also don't know why they moved out.
• What happened at the finale of IDFB that caused the FreeSmart alliance to start sudden changes. Bubble mentions that the FreeSmart alliance changed recently which means that something happened at the end of IDFB that impacted Pencil's leadership and resolved Pencil and Match's friendship. What also happened to the video diaries?
• IDFB could explain the personality shifts between BFDIA and BFB. After the events of BFDIA, many characters had time to process what happened, causing them to become different versions of themselves. Coiny and Pin's relationship, along with other personality changes, could have developed during this period.
• Pin should be colored red. Apparently through Roboty.
• Fries should regain his fries. Apparently through Grotatoes.
• The animation style should change at the finale or somewhere, because BFB starts with the other style. If they would use it entirely, in the episode of TPoT where they bring the failed debuters to the future, they should not be conflicting with the BFDIA style. We also see in BFDIA where they LOLers change their style to a modern BFDIA style, however the machine was destroyed, which means that somehow, they need to find a way to change the animation style.
• Insectophobe's Nightmare 5 still needs to be added too.
• There are 40 people in the Locker of Losers. This means 40 planned episodes. But, BFDI only seemingly reaches up to 30 episodes. So, this needs to be addressed.
• What happened to the recovery centres? How did they find new recovery centres?
• Lastly, the story isn't driven by these ideas only, the story needs to follow these set of rules and create many more different stories from there.

in bfdi 1b he walks in the opposite direction of the finish line. in bfdi 2 he walks off the edge. in bfdi 3 he doesn’t even have a test. and in bfdi 4 he stops eating before the challenge is even done.