on fake pep and pizzahead

an essaypost because as far as i'm concerned pizzahead is dead and gone postgame. i know he isn't really and as far as the credits show he Does just kinda show up to lurk around peppino's sometimes, but i do not like or care about him enough to explore that encounter in art or a comic </3

if i did though this would be the vibe

now not to be misleading, i don't think pizzahead was ever outright mean or abusive to fp or anything, but he has a pretty strong track record of being neglectful and Not Really Giving A Shit, so... i don't exactly think their relationship was great either.

i mentioned on the post about the peppinos postgame that fake pep's nervousness mostly stems from him being very Unsure about everything- being a test tube baby and only ever knowing the tower --specifically mostly just bruno's where there was never anyone around+the labs which, while not a warzone in the traditional sense for him, still had him largely in survival mode and didn't give him any room for learning and self-actualization and whatnot--means he just Does Not Know much about how anything in the regular world works, and really he's missing a lot about how to contextualize his own experiences as well. being a fucked up unnatural Thing certainly doesn't help either, as there's no one else around that's like him in that way to learn or take cues from [the war clones weren't really sapient enough to glean much from, so closest he's got is real pep, which... only goes so far]; not to mention most people's reaction to anything he does is fear, there's a language barrier, i could really keep going here but the point is he just doesn't really know how to handle himself around people, which makes him Very Anxious.

this is ESPECIALLY strong anyone he perceives to have some kind of authority over him. peppino and pizzahead both are chief among these, and where i said a lot of the reason he gets on well with peppino because there is zero emotional guesswork with pep, the express opposite is true with pizzahead. you never know WHAT that guy is thinking. sure he's all smiles and silliness, but that doesn't translate to approval when fp has no doubt seen pizzahead committing The Atrocities while acting giddy as ever.

now for what it's worth, i do think pizzahead like, Liked fake pep; and at the very least was proud of him as like, his prized creation or whatever. not sure how much i'd say he respected fp as his own person outside of that but honestly even if he did it doesn't matter much given how... aloof he is with all his minions/employees anyway. nonetheless, his cheeriness towards fp wasn't disingenuous. as i see it, his giving fp his own little shop/attraction to run more or less how he pleased and making him the last and strongest guard to prevent people from getting to floor 5 was meant to attest to fake pep's potential and the prestigious place he would hold in his pizza empire.

unfortunately fp didn't know enough about ph or his motives, or even what he himself was supposed to be doing to understand it like that at all. i feel like pizzahead stayed pretty busy trying to get the tower ready for business; hardly any of his underlings really got much of a chance to talk to him, much less ones with whom he didn't have to work out things like "job interviews" or "financial compensation" and that sort of thing. fake peppino certainly knew who pizzahead IS, but i don't think they ever actually talked or interacted enough for fp to even so much as know his name. fake pep's perception of the events was more or less that they just shoved him in a dingy old shop for reasons unknown and told him not to let anyone upstairs, also for reasons unknown, and also to ESPECIALLY not let the real peppino up there. [with as pointed a target as peppino had on him by floor 4, i feel like it's not a stretch to say fake pep was given some kind of specific warning about him lmao]

besides lack of clarity about his purpose though, i think the most pressing question fake peppino would have for pizzahead, had he the nerve to ask it [which he doesn't], would be "why did you make me like this?" he's seen the other peppino clones, he's seen peppinoreal, he knows he's the odd one out. he knows he's supposed to Be Peppino, or be like peppino, or replace him, or something like that; but as far as he can tell he's just, by design, very bad at it. why would pizzahead make him bad at it? he's clearly capable of making more on-model clones, so what gives? did he just not care? was it some kind of sick joke? hell if fp is ever gonna know.

and to reiterate, pizzahead very much considers fake pep his prized creation; a new and improved Better Peppino, taller, friendlier, always has a charming smile, etc. These were intentional choices and meant to be a positive thing, but without knowing that context, fp is only ever going to see these features as flaws.

it's part of an overall 'inferiority' thing. see, as i see it, most of fp's existence has been defined by failure. failure to guard floor 5, failure to stop peppino [twice!!!], failure to Be peppino, failure to, i don't fuckin know, not become best buds with peppino??? surely that was not in the lesson plan. but anyway, basically everything fp had been given any real instruction to do, he has failed at.

obviously not a great feeling, like, in general, but a hell of a lot worse when confronting the guy who GAVE him that instruction in the first place. and even more so when, again, he can never read pizzahead's mood and well and goddamn aware of the atrocities this motherfucker has committed. [which to be fair ph would not actually do anything awful to fake pep; he'd just be like, mildly disappointed at worst. but as with everything else, fp does not know that]

fake pep as i play him is not particularly given to reflection, but i'm sure by now he's at least realized that the tower was not a great situation and/or that there was some fucked up shit going on in there....at this point I don't think he knows what he feels towards it or pizzahead.

the tower is still very much the first place he called home; bruno's was in some sense "made for him", and it wasn't exactly his choice to leave. he's also never been given an explicit reason to hate or distrust pizzahead, but on the flipside, his living around peppino has just been like so much better in every way, and again- this is the guy he had been told was a danger and given explicit instruction to stop. there's also something to be said for how hes gotta be aware of how much peppinoreal fucking hates the tower... i don't really have a coherent way to wrap this up, but like, you get it. It's Complicated™ and he's really not going to confront it unless he has to.

for the most part though, i... really don't think he's going to have to confront it. his life is a lot better now and there's little reason for most of it to come up; none of his past failures really matter here, and in some sense they're even celebrated; peppinoreal is far more glad that fp doesn't actually look or act much like him, so even if it still stings a bit somewhere in the back of his mind, maybe it's not so bad he's his own person.

anyway. to further clarify the image at the top, it's not peppino deliberately defending fp; it's peppino being "kill on sight" at pizzahead, and fp readily deferring to peppino's action because he is absolutely not figuring out his feelings on [gestures broadly to everything else in the post] in the moment, and pep is obviously a hell of a lot more ready to handle this situation than he is.

And a quick last tldr to clarify what I meant by everything else in the post,