manifesting gumball to win that poll because no one gets him like i do and i say he deserves to win so that means he needs to win

What song do you associate with Gumball Watterson?

Ooh, there are a few! Not all of them are an exact fit for him but I think of him when I hear a lot of them. Below are two songs (along with a detailed analysis on why I think each one is fitting). There are more that seem to fit him but these are the big ones off the top of my head. 

Fine, Great by Modern Baseball is one. The song really strikes me as someone who tries to pretend they care less about things and people than they do, tries to seem annoyed with those around them, comes off as apathetic. “But it’s alright, and i’m okay, I don’t need your help anyway” is one example, showing how the person responds to other’s worrying about them, brushing it off and trying to act like they don’t want the support they clearly need. This reminds me of Gumball because he’s known to act like he’s fine when he isn’t (the shell is the biggest one example where he told his family he was alright and then went and cried his eyes out, and while usually it’s more subtext than that, his tendency to pretend things that upset him aren’t a big deal is present a lot) and usually he deflects any worry people may show for him by being sarcastic and snarky with them because when people are annoyed with him they don’t usually see through his fake apathy. “All I wanna do is worry about everyone but me” is another one, showing that the person doesn’t focus on themselves as much as other people. Now within the context of the song it probably means they try to help other people instead of helping themselves, however worrying about other people doesn’t necessarily have to be caring about them or innocent concern. I mean, have you ever had a teacher tell you not to worry about other people when you complain to them about someone else breaking the rules? “Worrying about” someone could be focusing on their negatives and they way they’re messing up, and it’s been established that Gumball often deflects his own insecurities by focusing on other people’s. The whole verse “I’m so tired, or maybe just bored, I can’t really tell the difference whenever i’m talking to you, and I know that you just adore starting off with me that way there’s no way i’ll assume that you’re wasting all of my time to vent about your problems like how your instagram stopped working or how you’re friends bailed on you but it was funny because that was the day you were supposed to hang with me....yeah about that...” also strikes me. The part where they say “I’m so tired” could definitely be a sign that the narrator has some emotional issues and depression going on that would make them ‘tired’, but not wanting to confide in the other person they quickly backtrack, changing it to be talking about how bored they are with the conversation and how annoying the other person is. Again, I think Gumball purposefully portrays himself as selfish and tries to act all bored an judgey and apathetic specifically so people don’t look too deeply into him and all I can think about when I hear those lines is him talking about how annoying Alan is because he’s nice to Gumball and Gumball doesn’t know how to deal with someone being nice and patient and actually acknowledging his emotions since he uses being a bit of a jerk to deflect that exact sort of attention and usually people don’t look much deeper. The whole verse “I’m guilty as charged for leading you on a lie that I know it’s easy to see, but it’s crucial to blot out any signs that I might have feelings This way you don't ask me, how am I? This way you won't force me to proceed with actually having to tell you my worries, with actually having you give a damn about me....you giving a damn about...” has the same implications but it actually shows that a lot of people around the narrator notice something’s wrong but choose to take the opportunity to ignore it. ‘Leading you on a lie that I know it’s easy to see’ is saying that their false apathy is see through and that people can easily tell that it’s not real, however with, ‘it’s crucial to blot out any signs that i might have feelings’ it shows that not only does the narrator encourage people to ignore the emotions they try to hide, but that most people, seeing through the lie, purposefully take the opportunity the narrator gives them to ignore it since they don’t actually care, they just don’t want to be responsible if the narrator has some sort of breakdown, and they take the deniability the narrator gives them without a second thought. ‘this way you don’t ask me how am i, this way you don’t force me to proceed with actually having to tell you my worries, with actually having you give a damn about me..’ strengthens that. The people in the narrators life don’t actually care about the narrator’s feelings or mental stability, they don’t really want to know how the narrator is, they don’t want to deal with the narrator’s issues, they just want to look good by going through the motions of asking so they can say they tried, and the narrator, not wanting to talk about themselves or their issues, is happy to oblige and give them an out. Once again this reminds me of Gumball. The people around him love him but they also wanna believe everything is fine with him because they have their own stresses and if they found out he wasn’t okay, they’d be forced to deal with that, both out of a sense of obligation to take care of their loved one, and because they do care about him. It’s not that they don’t care, but they want him to be fine so they don’t have to deal with it if he’s not, and so when he tells them that everything’s fine and deflects by being all annoyed and apathetic, they want to believe it so badly that they do because they’ve got enough issues to deal with themselves. However it obviously comes across to him as if they just don’t care, and so he hides even farther because now he thinks nobody cares. At the very end of the song the narrator repeats the first few lines of the song “ I hate worrying about the future cause All my fucking problems are based around the past, and I hate when you call me late at night just to check in to make sure I got nothing to be sad about But it's alright and I'm okay I don’t need your help anyway.”, except with more emotion than the first time because the narrator is even more hurt by the apparent unconcern of those around them, which I find fitting of Gumball because while it’s true that the kid has a lot of emotional issues, the one I think effects him the most, is that he feels like those around him (especially his family) don’t really care about or need him.

Saint Bernard by Lincoln (ignoring a lot of the religious tones to the song and taking them as metaphor). The song starts off with the line “Hung pictures of patron saints up on my wall, to remind me that i am a fool—” and honestly what immediately strikes me about this line is the narrator referring to themself as a fool as if they legitimately believe themselves to be one. It strikes me that they have very low self confidence, and that reminds me of Gumball, especially since the narrator described themselves with the word ‘fool’ and Gumball has been lead to believe that he’s stupid. Now whenever I picture this song when thinking about Gumball I don’t use patron saints because....the religious references are just metaphors (at least in my interpenetration since...Gumball doesn’t have much to do with religion, lol) and I actually think of his siblings filling the role of the patron saints in this song. Someone above him, who’s better than him, who he doesn’t necessarily resent but who he still feels some level of hurt towards for them being better than him. Someone who’s pictures would be hung on the wall, taunting him, proving to him that he’s nothing, at least in comparison. Then there’s the line “Tell me where I came from, what I will always be: Just a spoiled little kid who went to Catholic school.”  and it feels like the narrator both is upset that he’ll never amount to anything or have a greater legacy than...catholic school, but he also refers to himself as ‘spoiled’ which shows that maybe the narrator acknowledges that they haven’t had an objectively awful life and feels like they have no place to complain. This reminds me of Gumball, not only because he’s been convinced that he doesn’t have any potential and won’t amount to anything, but because there aren’t many reasons for him to complain. His family loves him, he’s got food and a house and even a tv, he had an education, etc, so it’d be dumb to complain, and yet he’s still a very sad and insecure character (for good reason but it’d be easy for him to doubt himself and think he’s just spoiled) the song also has this line, “When i am dead i won't join their ranks because they are both holy and free” is another line. The narrator is comparing themself with these people and clearly doesn’t believe that he matches up to them and that they’re better than him. But the narrator also clearly sees all the good in them, not in an annoyed ‘ohh, they think they’re so great >:(’ way but in a genuine ‘they’re great and i can’t hate them because they really are great but i can’t help but hurt that i can’t be great too’ way. And I can see Gumball feeling that way towards his siblings, who I already said I was using as stand-in’s for the ‘patron saints’. He loves them with all his heart, really. He thinks they’re wonderful. But he’s painfully aware that he can’t compare to them. Now there’s the line “I said make me love myself so that i might love you. Don't make me a liar, because i swear to god when i said it i thought it was true”. Well this one isn’t talking about the patron saints anymore since the saints are referred to as ‘they’, separate people from the conversation, while thing line uses ‘you’, as in the person the narrator is talking to. And it feels like a romantic partner so when I think of this in the context of the song applying to Gumball I immediately think of Penny. This line just drips with affection and genuine love, like the kind of love that Gumball has for his girlfriend, but the line also acknowledges that the narrator is deeply insecure and feels torn because people always say you can’t love someone before you love yourself, and yet Gumball doesn’t love himself, and he does love her so so so much. Then there’s the line “Saint Calvin told me not to worry about you, but he’s got his own things to deal with. There’s really only one thing that we have in common: Neither of us will be missed” Well again, we have the ‘you’ prefix, which i’m assigning to a new person since I don’t think this line is fitting for talking about Penny tbh. However i’ll have to explain why i’m using this person so I won’t name them yet, just bare with me. ‘Saint Calvin’ is probably John Calvin, and I know I said I would use the religious stuff as strictly metaphorical, but I think the connotations behind him were interesting. John Calvin was a believer in predestination, or the idea that someone in destined to heaven or hell since birth. In the song, talking about John Calvin is probably speaking on how the narrator doesn’t feel like they have much potential, like they were born into a role and like they’re meant to spend their whole lives in it (the role of a spoiled kid who went to catholic school). When applying this to Gumball it works on multiple levels. First off, it works with the implications the narrator put to it, that, as said earlier, he doesn’t believe he has any real potential in his life. However there’s a whole new implication to that which we can put on Gumball that wasn’t implied with the original narrator. In tawog, they’re in a tv show in universe as well as out. The idea of being born into a certain role, predestined to be in that position, is incredibly prominent in the show. Gumball was put into the role of the protagonist, the hero. And what’s the other side to that? The villain. Which makes me associate this line with Rob, who was forced to be the villain just off the merit of Gumball being the hero. I’m calling Rob the ‘you’ in this section of this song. The part where he says ‘Saint Calvin told me not to worry about you’ is probably the narrator addressing someone he cares about who he sees as a sinner, going against the beliefs the narrator holds dear,  which makes the narrator want to help this person, but according to John Calvin’s belief, people are destined for heaven or hell from the start, so there’s nothing that can be done for this person. Well, putting Gumball in the role of the narrator and Rob in the role of the other person, this still works. Gumball clearly cares a lot about Rob weather he wants to admit it or not, but Rob was forced into the role of a villain, and to everyone involved he’s meant to stay in that role, and it’s no use trying to help him be anything else. Gumball isn’t supposed worry about him, though, both because it’s not supposed to be possible to change his role in the show, and because with Gumball being the hero and Rob being the villain, Gumball is supposed to hate Rob. Also, going with the theme of using Gumball’s siblings for the saints in this song, neither Darwin or Anais care much or worry about Rob the way Gumball does, and could also be the saint telling him not to worry about Rob, and I can see Gumball using the line ‘but he has his own things to do’ to show his annoyance over always being judged. They’re better than him and they clearly act like they’re above him, so they shouldn’t waste their time judging what he does, and they don’t because while they more than likely don’t see all that Gumball sees in Rob, they also are too occupied with other things most of the time Gumball is around Rob to scold him. Clearly, though, Gumball doesn’t follow this idea that Rob is bad and that he shouldn’t care about him, since he really really does not hate Rob. Then there’s the part of ‘neither of us will be missed’, which is also fitting of the two of them. Rob has no friends, no family, he was sent to the void for heaven’s sake, the only person who would probably notice if he went missing tomorrow is Gumball. And as for Gumball, he’s deeply insecure and feels like people don’t really care about him. If he disappeared tomorrow maybe people would notice but maybe they’d be better for it too. When Gumball imagines the future he probably sees his siblings (who we talked a lot about earlier) having good, successful lives. His sister’ll probably graduate college and be some big shot scientist or something and make loads of money and be able to support herself. His brother’ll probably have a nice house and marry his highschool sweetheart and have 2.5 kids and a dog and he’ll get a nice job and host game night for all his friends every saturday. However it’s been established that Gumball doesn’t really think he’ll have an important future. He probably thinks he’ll have no job or a poor paying one, probably thinks his girlfriend will either leave him or be held back by him, etc. Gumball doesn’t think he’d be missed if he were gone, really, and it’s something that connects him with Rob, who’s supposed to be his enemy, who he’s supposed to have nothing in common with. Then finally there’s this part of the song “A saint bernard sits at the top of the driveway. You always said how you loved dogs. I don't know if i count, but i'm trying my best when i'm howling and barking these songs”. Well, i’m hesitant on the meaning of this one because in talking about ‘saint bernard’ they’re most likely making more associations with actual saints, however I couldn’t find much meaning behind the actually saint bernard, so i’m going with the associations behind the dog breed cause he mentions the name particularly in reference to the dog breed. This breed is particularly known to be sweet and well behaved and patient and easily trained and very very intelligent. And going with the theme of associating ‘saints’ in this song with Gumball’s siblings...Darwin is very sweet and well behaved and Anais is definately extremely intelligent and trainable. Going off of another running theme in this analysis, we’re going to change who ‘you’ is in this paragraph too. Imma go with their parents who clearly favor his siblings over him. This shows Gumball, once again, thinking he can’t live up to his siblings, but trying his best to anyway despite thinking he falls short, and just hoping it’s good enough.