#? perhaps ??

[phin-and-frob]

YES and like it's less directly referenced, but the show also touches on how wirt's negative self image and "nobody wants me I must be doomed to walk this life alone" bit, where he simultaneously longs for social connection/acceptance while also romanticizing and waxing poetic about his isolation and inclination self reliance, is likely being reinforced by his experience in the blended family dynamic.

he feels disconnected from his family, like an outsider. While some kids get angry at the new parent/siblings that are introduced, wirt projects the "blame" inward onto himself. its possible he feels like greg + Greg's dad his mom's preferred or *real* family and he's just a reminder of a past mistake and is unwanted. And/or he might just feel like there's not a space for himself in his mom's new life.

Especially with their age difference there was probably several years where the majority of the mental and emotional energy in the family was focused on taking care of the new baby. So wirt has developed a mentality of self reliance tinted with some feelings of being unwanted/unlikable (this mentality can definitely be seen in his social anxiety around his classmates and how he thinks they all hate him when they are mostly just neutral about him).

So he doesn't have a strong sense of belonging within his family unit or among his peers at school. So he tends to turn inward and pace around in his own head stewing on his thoughts and worries. and likely seeks out and clings tightly to any glimpses of representation he can find in the media he consumes (poetry, music, books etc). So he ends up idealizing this sort of misunderstood lone genius/artist archetype, bc it's a narrative that celebrates other people who feel lonely and misunderstood by the rest of society just like he does.

Also wirt is like 13/14? Puberty is a bitch and psychology 101 will tell you that during the teen years the most important relationships in a person's life shift from being family bonds to bonds with friends and peers.

So wirt is going through this internal struggle between

1 - The part of him that is resigned to isolation and is maybe even proud of it (bc it makes him fit the tragic artist archetype he idolizes)

and

2 - the part of him that feels lonely and is desperately seeking belonging and understanding from others.

And like,,that's rough buddy, puberty is hard I get it.

But as OP pointed out, he's so absorbed in his own internal conflicts and feelings that he brushes off Greg constantly, to the point that he doesn't even realize the unconditional love and acceptance greg is already giving him freely (obv it's not the same type of belonging he needs/wants from peers but it's a start and, crucially, it disproves the idea that he is some tragic loner doomed to a life without love--his family loves him--Greg loves him--he does have a place of belonging in his family-- they want him there!)

and it takes greg almost dying for him to snap out of it and accept the olive branch Greg's been trying to give him the whole time and start repairing his sense of belonging in his family (which in turn seems to help boost his confidence interacting with his peers)

ig in summary: I think wirt's experience with blended family dynamics actually does a lot in terms of helping establish the mindset, characterization, and therefore character development of wirt throughout the series.

like yeah it's easy to say he's just a grumpy teenager who thinks his little brother is lame but he's a teenager with a very specific lived experience that explains and influences how and why he pushes his brother (and other people like his classmates) away when they try to connect with him.

i dont think enough otgw fans talk about the exploration of complex family dynamics that the show manages to weave through pretty much every episode. like the relationship between wirt and greg seems so innocuous in the beginning, just normal aloofness due to the age gap, but as the episodes go on it becomes clear that wirt full on resents greg and actively dismisses him as “his stepdad’s kid,” while greg openly admires/loves wirt and doesnt understand why he wont spend time with him. theres so many little moments that make the lack of reciprocity in their relationship obvious, and it literally takes almost DYING for wirt to understand that he needs to treat his brother better. like holy fuck man ill be shocked if the person who wrote their backstory doesnt have a step/half-sibling cause WOW they got it right

[cryonvin]

I feel sick, hopefully I miss school but also yknow I hope not? Because I don’t want to miss information but I also don’t want to go to school

[very-uncorrect]

My reflection isn't me and they seem trapped in the mirror world and keep asking for help but it doesn't seem like anyone else can see them and I keep having to move around so they don't have enough time to punch any reflective surface enough to break through, people around me having started joking that I bring everyone 7 years bad luck with how mirrors and windows always seem to crack when I'm near

[scramratz]

Definite banners and possible bumper stickers for the shop

[finnbin]

ohmigoodness he's so perfect

Bill Cipher if he was some sort of gremlin or perhaps an imp.

i’m kinda proud of this design tbh. so i couldn’t resist making some friendship AU content with it

that fake screenshot is based on this:

[sennenrings]

after the full moon, circa 1976

do not repost my art.

[sunderwight]

Shen Yuan who glitches in his transmigration, but the original Shen Qingqiu still dies of a qi deviation.

So the System still needs someone with narrative relevance to throw Luo Binghe into the Abyss. In a fit of desperation, it contrives circumstances after Shen Qingqiu's death to move Luo Binghe to An Ding Peak (not that difficult), and then the System makes Shang Qinghua be Luo Binghe's new scum master who casts him down.

Airplane's thrilled, really. Cultivators aren't supposed to get ulcers but damned if he doesn't come close to one anyway. Between Shen Qingqiu and then just a while later Liu Qingge both dying from qi deviations, and Shang Qinghua looking like a stiff breeze could take him out any day now, poor Mu Qingfang is also just about at his wits' end.

But it's not all bad news! On An Ding Peak, Luo Binghe actually finds himself surrounded by the kinds of people who are accustomed to being bullied by the rest of the sect. So they're pretty sympathetic to him, and it's easier for someone with basic laboring skills to advance on that peak too. His chores don't decrease too much, but he actually gets rewarded for doing them well, and no one tries to kick him out of the dorms or anything. Shang Qinghua doesn't either go out of his way to bully or praise Luo Binghe, correctly reasoning that his best shot at not getting a gruesome death is to just be a more forgettable bad guy than an abusive dirtbag or a heart-wrenching betrayal. He doesn't sabotage Luo Binghe's cultivation (no point, and it would just farm resentment later) but he also doesn't go out of his way to help him improve (not gonna arm his inevitable maybe-probably-murderer with better weapons!), so Luo Binghe's situation sees an overall improvement but not the zero-to-hero treatment he'd have got with Shen Yuan either.

When Shang Qinghua shoves Luo Binghe into the Abyss (he just full on picks him up and tosses him like a sack of beans, better to rip it off quick like a bandage), LBH is upset, but he's not especially surprised or dismayed about Shang Qinghua's part in it. Later on he'll be kind of confused, because he just assumed that of course the righteous sect cultivator would abhor the demon, but it turns out Shang Qinghua has been working for a demon since before Luo Binghe even came to the sect? But then it still kind of makes sense because a Heavenly Demon would definitely pose a risk to Mobei Jun and to Mobei Jun's rule. Shang Qinghua, he supposes, is just really loyal to his specific demon.

Luo Binghe's subsequent revenge quest is also somewhat mitigated by the Abyss actually not being that bad.

The Abyss is not actually that bad thanks to the glitched out Shen Yuan having been camping there for several years now.

So when Shen Yuan's transmigration failed it failed because he "woke up" during the process, realized where the System intended to put him, was like no way in goddamn hell am I being that guy about it, and actually kind of won the ensuing tug-of-war. The System couldn't put him in Shen Qingqiu but Shen Yuan didn't want to go back to his dead body either, so he ended up stuck in the nearest available space for lost interdimensional beings. Which was the Endless Abyss.

Luckily Shen Yuan's quasi-transmigrated imparted an equivalent cultivation level as Shen Jiu's to him, and the glitch made him able to sense and manipulate certain extra-dimensional energies, so he manifested as this weird godlike being able to manipulate and control aspects of the Abyss. So he set about transforming Airplane's Torment Nexus into a viable ecosystem (the current version would not be anything approaching sustainable were it not for divine/narrative intervention, and is constantly on the verge of destabilizing into unlivable ruin that would only be fit for some particularly hardy microorganisms).

It's still like, a monster land full of demonic creatures and terrifying phenomenon, but with Shen Yuan's assistance it becomes something more like a demonic wildlife reserve than a dimensional horror plane. Though it is still a dimensional horror plane, and Shen Yuan is its chief dimensional horror. He treats it sort of like those dungeon building or wildlife park sims, figuring out how to keep everything in balance while still preserving all the interesting parts. A lot of the extreme survival issues of the Abyss are more of a result of it being environmentally unstable than a result of its actual denizens, and once he smooths out a lot of the messy dimensional edges and creates stable vents for the fluctuating energy run-off, the demonic inhabits start behaving less like horror movie monsters and more like animals. They're still wild and dangerous and prone to killing one another, but also more cautious, and able to access enough stable resources that they can even start to be picky about what they pursue.

Turns out that a lot of creatures in the Abyss actually don't like fighting and dying and being brutally injured on a regular basis, even if they can heal from it!

Shen Yuan has even discovered that some like chin scritches (he's not terribly worried about habituating them to people, given how rarely any people actually access the Abyss, but also because he's not really all that people-ish himself these days).

This means that one of Luo Binghe's first encounters with the horrible creatures of the Abyss, is in fact a pack of wolf-like monsters thoroughly avoiding an actual fight with him. In fact most of the denizens of the Abyss just avoid him. They can smell the Heavenly Demon energy rolling off of him, and given the current abundance of alternatives to dealing with that, virtually none of the monsters actually choose to challenge him. There are still a few that will go after anything that's bleeding, but that problem stops once Luo Binghe's physiology heals his wounds, which takes like... a couple hours, max.

Despite the stories he's heard, Luo Binghe is relieved to find that the Abyss is not quite so terrible as all that. Normal survival skills suffice for seeing him through much of it. He's able to hunt for food, scavenge for tools, and even finds potable water fairly easily. After a few weeks, he also comes across a ruin which seems to be inhabited.

The being inhabiting it is plainly a god, although he demurs and refutes such assertions whenever Binghe is too frank. He's a strange being, at turns looking like some queer approximation of a human, at other times blinking and winking in and out of existence, in patterns of strange lights and oddly geometrical fire. But he's surprisingly not hostile, letting Binghe rest in his residence, and even directing him towards points of interest. Accompanying him, too, though he seems to think that Binghe doesn't notice the odd almost spiderweb-like patterns that appear on things which he's influencing. The god calls himself The Peerless One, or at least that's what Luo Binghe infers from some writings on the ruin. The Peerless One offers instruction, seemingly without thinking about it, and gets flustered at being addressed by title, so Binghe also begins to refer to him as Shizun after a while.

[pinkiepig]

Baal and Aym for the soul

[lara-cairncross]

some quick notes about Mikey :D

The quality and quantity of the light in his environment can have different effects on him!

I exaggerated the emotions a bit here, but lighting *does* have an impact on his mood. It’s typically not a super extreme effect— more so just, like, overcast days will make him moodier than usual or slightly more fatigued— but he’s still a lot more sensitive to the light in his environment than other light-talent fairies :]

im debating making refs for each of the boys which some little notes about their appearance/powers, but that might take a while lol

[manyrepulsivethoughts]

that one post comparing ruin's and LN2 endings altered my brain chemistry so now have this

[cup-o-stars]

Originally I was gonna draw her in my favorite outfits she's worn, but with barely any digging I realized she consistently has the best looks- as well as the most- and it will take way too long to pick through them. So I just drew her.

[kksanartist]

"Another Bug Friend?" A fan sketch of Nate AKA Dewi's Dad and Bug!Dewi by @lilybug-02

Love both of them and I did asked about Nate meeting Bug!Dewi but in the end, I just draw it myself instead lol.

[finnbin]

have this because I'm in love with those "powerless bill is stuck in the mystery shack to be reintroduced into society" aus

original under cut:

thank you to @millenianthemums for the idea >:))

[wyyvoren]

me and @artsarasp making SQH and SQQ kiss and giggling about it

[ohmaerieme]

and the universe said, you have played the game well.