okay I gotta share my thoughts on this because you brought it up in the tags re: running the risk of Bill's background coming across ass "oppressed person goes too far and is the real bad guy" because tbh I think it's a risk you can run into wether or not you hc Bill as irregular considering triangles weren't dealt the best cards either and there's something to think about how Bill doesn't care about norms while having grown up in the dystopia that is Flatland. Anyway, my point is I do mostly see the implications that come with him being from Flatland as a parallel to Ford who himself was ostricized and personally do also see the emphasis on Bill being selfish. Like I think about how Ford never really stopped caring about other people while Bill burned down his whole world INCLUDING people who were in similarly bad places in life as him anyway yeah I'm normal about him
YES YES YES you get it you get it
like, no matter what, bill as a flatlander is gonna run into the trope where it's like "well i agreed that this oppressed person should have rights, but then he started shooting puppies :/" just because the canon end to "bill is a flatlander" is "bill killed every other flatlander except kryptos because kryptos is his silly rabbit including ones who would have undoubtably been so much worse off than him." the most privileged he could have been is a perfectly regular equilateral from a "good family line" who owned some sort of business and that's still part of the acute rabble, and there's no textual evidence that he was even that well off
(there's also not any textual evidence he wasn't, to be clear, but it's up in the air. hell, some people even hc him as isosceles, and while i don't, because i think his salesman persona being something he got from his life in flatland and still falls back on is SO juicy, it's still possible! as long as it's in the realm of "was a triangle," SO much about bill's flatland life is up for grabs! the only thing that's solid is he was, at least, near the bottom of the foodchain)
anyway i just personally think mildly irregular "repaired" bill who was just "acceptable" enough to make it to adulthood and even be tentatively allowed a (very monitored, very scrutinized) sales career, but still considered a societal Freak fits with a lot of bill's whole deal and fills in a lot of gaps about his relationship with his family, his relationship with his home dimension, and gives a good insight into why flatland brainwashing wouldn't have worked on him, because it's very hard to find any value in a system that automatically sees you as a disposable thing as opposed to a person
also "mild" birth defect that shapes and defines every aspect of your life, like... ford parallels (and to a lesser extent, dipper parallels,) are fun!
but YES no matter what you headcanon bill's life in flatland as being like, the end result still boils down to him being wildly childish and selfish. while he runs into the trope by virtue of his social standing no matter what, i think he skirts it at least a little just because he is not the type to care about others, and he clearly doesn't care about any real societal change. he's a nuanced selfish bastard, sure, but a selfish bastard
bill and ford are both weird little societal freaks, but despite what the world threw at ford, he never stopped caring about others, even at his worst. bill on the other hand, at what could have been his best, (at whatever turned him into a god with more power than any flatlander had ever had,) killed everyone he'd ever known and even those he didn't. ford got a taste of insane power and, once he was lucid enough to realize the implications of it, was terrified of the way it could hurt others. bill got a taste of insane power and burned a damaged world into a crisp instead of doing literally anything else
anyway yeah i'm also really normal about bill
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