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[pluralsinmedia]

Have a (rather delayed) review of Don’t Starve and Don’t Starve Together’s Webber

Spoiler Free Overview:

• Number of canon plural systems: 1
• System types: fantasy possession
• Personhood: 8/10
• Dynamic: 5.5/10
• Narrative Sympathy: 9/10
• Consistency: 10/10
• Edge: 6.5/10
• Singlet Nonsense: 3/10
• Overall series grade: 8/10

Full Spoiler Overview Below Cut:

Dont Starve Together is a sandbox randomly generated survival game where one survives in the wilderness playing as one of a selection of characters who have been tricked into The Constant, a strange dimension where many people are now trapped. One such character is Webber.

Webber was a young boy who’s father obtained a spider from The Constant and was doing science to it. Upset his father wouldn’t spend time with him, he snuck into the lab got combined with the spider when he pushed over the thing containing it. Horrified by the strange monster in the lab, his parents chased him away without knowing he was their son. He gets trapped in The Constant when Maxwell tricks him into it by promising him a way to turn back to normal.

Plural Characters: Webber

System types: Fantasy Possession

Personhood: Webber gets just as much development as the rest of the cast- that is to say, very little and done mostly through dialogue. Webber alternates between talking as ‘I’ and ‘we’. The player does not hear much about the functional details of their situation, only knowing how they came to be in the first place. We don’t get to hear much about the spider and the boy separately, but there are a couple of lines that seem to be about the two of them.

There is the text for the Grainy Transmission in which Webber says "Should we help him? I don't mind, but he's not so sure...", the Cooked Purple Grouper, where Webbber says "He likes the fish heads. I don't.", and the Cooked Kelp Fronds- "He doesn't like it very much, but I think it's okay.". There is also the removed texts for Joy of Volcanology- "I can't read, but he can!" and "I'm not a good reader, but he is!" which are likely about the two of them.

If Webber kills someone and Willow sees it, Willow will say "Monster! Burn them!", acknowledging their plurality as well. If Wortox is nearby he will also drop two souls when killed, indicating intention of personhood for both the spider and the boy. When examining his skull, Wortox will also say "Hm. There's two souls wedged inside."

Some points will be deducted for this all being very vague and hidden, but the game is very vague about all of the characters, really, so only a little bit is knocked off. 8/10

Dynamic: Unfortunately, we really dont hear much about the functional details of how they currently are. Only a few bits of dialogue explicitly seem to indicate anything there. The one for the Empty Elixir; "I kinda wanna drink what's left, but he won't let me.", doesn’t necessarily refer to both the spider and the boy- but seems to imply they can override each other and/or switch. The other bit of dialogue is for the Ageless Watch, Second Chance Watch, Backstep Watch, Backtrek Watch, and Rift Watch- "Would we change anything if we could go back in time?". This implies they don’t mind all that much being stuck together now, like they did at the start.

The use of we in many of the lines as well implies they are aware of each other and have some level of teamwork, even if we cant see it. As we don’t really see much of this, low score again, buoyed by the fact that most characters have little elaboration. 5.5/10

Narrative Sympathy: Webber is a main character who is given a strong sympathetic light, so yes, there is a comfortable amount of sympathy. There is no part of the story in which it feels like we are supposed to hate Webber. We are mostly meant to feel sorry for Webber- both the boy and the spider. When the other characters vilify Webber, it is generally only because a player playing Webber chose to do something actively bad(attacking, murder, etc), and vilification is in the trend of them having a monster’s body rather than about their plurality. 9/10

Consistency: Webber is plural throughout. He is not made singlet, he is not forgotten to be plural, and they are described consistently by the narrative. The narrative doesn’t go into detail, but the text of the game as of this review doesn't forget he is plural. 10/10

Edge: The whole monster transformation shame angst situation where its strongly implied in his trailer that he was trapped in the game’s setting because he wanted to return to ‘normal’ is most certainly edgy. However he seems to have changed his mind over time regarding this as his Vignette states “Webber could have easily seen his unique predicament as an affliction or a curse. Instead, he's chosen to view it as a second chance, and one that he fully intends not to waste.”. The aforementioned Watch items also align with this. This makes the edginess from this decrease somewhat.

The fantasy possession is also very edgy, and the fact that Webber has lower sanity than many of the other characters is moreso. This contributes significantly to Webber’s edge score, but the fact that most characters are edgy does help it. 6.5/10

Singlet Nonsense: The whole spider transformation fantasy possession/fusion thing. How exactly did this happen? Its sort of just a mystery how and why Webber ended up plural- especially when spiders eat/kill people in-game they don’t end up like Webber did. Its not particularly egregious, but it certainly is a choice to make Webber’s plurality an unexplained freak accident. Other than than he manages to dodge the other major singlet nonsense categories, he stays plural the whole game and doesn't have any setting-inappropriate magic going on beyond the unexplained transformation incident. 3/10

Overall series grade: While this game offers little in the way of concrete details, Webber is a solid plural character that while a bit edgy and sparely characterized, is overall positive and one of the few characters that remains plural throughout the media they are from. 8/10

Comments

[beepbird]

Always happy to see another character review- especially one I recognize! I have a soft spot for Webber. Personally, I think the sanity hit makes sense given he's implied to still a child during the game, but then again, he's not the only child in all of Don't Starve and the other kids aren't hit quite as hard in the sanity department. Unless you count Wilba.

It's always interesting to see how people handle fanfiction of Webber. Sometimes it's great, sometimes not so much, but still interesting.

[pluralsinmedia]

Yeah the fact that the other kids(besides Wilba) don't have that low a sanity bar was what finished deciding that we'd count it as a point in the edgy section. I suppose it could be a 'monsters get lower sanity' thing because Wilba is also low, but Wartox has average sanity and Wormwood has 200 which is pretty good, and Wurt's varies between average and good so it feels like the hit Webber takes fits in the edge section.

Yeah Webber is fun, love the little guy! We havent dipped our toes into the fanfic for Don't Starve yet, so we will have to check it out.