you should talk about the whisps
i will do that yes!!!! ESPECIALLY since im writing stuff for parallel reflections and finished the one scene i had so vivid in my head and have thoughts on the whisps
now. there a lot of interpretations and assumptions that can be made about their characters and how they live in the world around them. this also includes their relationship (which i am very clearly not defining within any text i write of them btw. its romantic its platonic its whatever you want it to be. but it IS codependent as fuck no matter what) and how they're seen by the world.
the whisps as a whole are, in essence, two guys having fun and being bad boys. and also the dog metaphor. but we'll get there.
in the beginning of parallel life, the whisps are together from the first moment. tibby doesn't know everyone, and ghost is a strong enough figure who:
is confident in himself
is confident his ability to play the game
tibby knows
HOWEVER ghost is equally drawn to tibby at the beginning of the game!!!! HE'S the first one to ban anyone else from using his crafting table, and HE'S the first to gift tibby the signature whisps cornflower! he's just as willing to team with tibby as tibby is to team with him. there's a sort of clinginess embedded within their duo as soon as they cross paths, and it's so sickeningly mutual. it gets so much worse, too!!!!!
as time passes and session one ends with the whisps TOGETHER as a unit, their group is defined by their loyalty to each other, first and foremost. No soulmates, no other allies, it's them versus everyone else. Isolated, they grow close to each other.
now. you cannot talk about isolation in a relationship (of any kind) without bringing up the cycle of abuse. yeah we're talking about this because it's important to the whole discussion. oh and i must preface this with the fact that we are talking about the CHARACTERS the actors play, and not the actors themselves. "characters, not creators" as the mantra sings!!
the fact that the whisps are so isolated and with each other is important. isolation to facilitate abuse is a tactic used by cults and abusers to draw the victim away from any aid or community in order to keep outside information and people away, and themselves in. this is often accompanied by reactive jealousy from the abuser.
that is to say. they are not healthy. i will not write them as healthy in a lot of the universes because their environment supported unhealthy boundaries and isolation. they do make it worse for each other in a lot of ways, though.
i do not think of them as abusive outright, as they don't even have enough time to really showcase the full range of their characters for various reasons, but they are so VERY codependent. tibby does not know what to do with himself after ghost dies, and states his helplessness outright multiple times to potato in the finale. he doesn't know where anything is, he doesn't know where some things are in his own base that he helped build.
so, final thoughts:
the whisps, as a duo, is queerbait being acted by people who are doing it for the love of the yaoi. they are improvised very well during the game and created compelling characters.
also here take my skin with the whisps jacket on it (+my dog also named tibby) because im perfectly normal and rational
i love talking about the whisps i miss them so much guys. oh and here take a little excerpt from my wip because im so close to being done with this first little dive into parallel reflections and i like it. take it.
"Potato says that I can heal from what we did to each other, and what he did to me, and what I did to him, and all of the ugly mess that it is. Says it like it’s some ugly wound, but I don’t know if it’s that way. If it’s a wound, it’s one that needs to be poked and bled to heal."
anyways cheers, have a good one, and ty for the ask!
