On Twin Souls, “Dipnip”, and Consent

Mods here!

We’ve been thinking about Twin Souls and dipnip and many of the hc’s about them, and we think that there are some clarifications that need to be made about their nature.

First, Twin Souls: it’s often a joke in the fandom that Mabel and other people prank Dipper by getting him gag gifts of Twin Souls, forcing him to listen to excerpts from it, etc. This is treated as hilarious most of the time, even as Dipper complains and begs Mabel to stop and even vomits at hearing the excerpts. For all intents and purposes, it appears as if Mabel is doing this without consent and Dipper has no say in the matter, no control over what’s happening, all for the sake of a laugh.

This is a rather worrisome implication, and the mods want to make it clear that that is not the case. Doing something to someone which they deem personally harmful without their consent is not okay, and not something we want to perpetuate as positive/funny.

When Dipper wails and whines and “vomits sparkles” upon hearing the excerpts and other Twin Souls-related things, he is, quite simply, playing up his displeasure; he’s being hyperbolic. Twin Souls is not something that is ever truly that terrible to him –in fact, he enjoys burning the books to a crisp (or finding other fun methods of obliterating them) every time they’re given to him, and Mabel knows this. It’s something he loves to hate. Most people have a thing or two they enjoy griping over that they really don’t care about that much, it’s just fun to make a show of it.

To be fair, he really does hate the books; he just chooses to be over-dramatic about his reactions to them most of the time. When he really is uncomfortable with hearing about it from Mabel, when she gets carried away, he can easily (and most of the time, does) just poof away; something to clarify is that he can’t actually be forced into listening and that he has more than enough power to remove himself from the situation. There are times when Mabel gets carried away–a definite flaw of hers is that sometimes she doesn’t know when it’s appropriate to keep going with the joke and when to stop. But if Dipper legitimately gets upset and tells her to stop and she sees that he’s serious, she does respect his wishes and stop.

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Now, about dipnip: another extremely common joke in the fandom is Dipper heading to a summoning and coming back dosed with dipnip and “hilarity ensues”. Again, the drugging appears nonconsensual, and we don’t want the fandom to skip over that and think it’s okay that even though he got drugged by surprise by some cult, it’s funny because it leads to him licking people and acting like a cat. That is never our intention.

So we want to clarify this issue: when Dipper gets drugged by cults, it does not lead to fun kitty-cat times, and he doesn’t enjoy it. It leads to him fighting off the effects and acting a bit more feral and tired due to that effort. Sometimes cults know of this weakness and try to weaponize it, to use it as a tranq dart of sorts. It…doesn’t usually end well for them.

The only times that he acts like a shitty cat are when he comes across it on his own and decides he’s fine with the effects (which is not very often) or if a family member or friend gives it to him (which is even rarer, due to Yggdrasil herb’s scarcity). Again: shitty cat mode is only activated when he is aware of the dipnip and consents to getting high. If a family member or friend ever gave it to him without his consent, and he truly did not want it, that would be a wrongdoing on their part; it’s not something to be approved of just because it’s done by someone “good”, because many of these “good” characters can and do make mistakes.

Yggdrasil can be treated like any other prank for Dipper when it comes from friends and family. It may not always be something he’s crazy about, but he’ll roll with it. To him specifically, it’s no less of a problem than someone sneaking up behind him and getting him with a squirt gun. What needs to be clarified here is that this is Dipper’s personal comfort level – no one should ever assume anyone is fine with drug-related pranks. It’s much more dangerous than a simple squirt gun barrage.

As an aside, Dipper only acts weird and licky and over-affectionate around people he’s comfortable with. He doesn’t go round licking random strangers, or the cult members.

TL;DR: People often tease out of love, and while people (and characters) aren’t perfect and are bound to take things too far at times, please keep in mind that non-consensual acts that truly hurt/upset someone should never be downplayed as funny. There is a distinct line between pranks and outright abuse.