Slightly related to this post but I’ve been thinking more about wisp family again during my very surface level pd skim (watching the episodes I liked best without taking like three billion notes) and it’s soooo interesting how different the dynamic is between them.
Upp William lives with his family, obviously. He’s fifteen and a troublemaker who always seems to disappear at the most inconvenient possible times. His parents are worried but don’t know what could possible be happening. They don’t believe Williams talk about the supernatural and his friends aren’t bad kids (even if Isaac is seen as also a troublemaker (though I doubt Williams parents genuinely think William is an innocent angel who was misguided lmao)), so they really don’t have any means of actually reaching out. And it’s not like Williams exactly open to communication.
Contrasting that with pd where we see Williams family once every blue moon, because William barely calls his parents. Where he’s living with strangers in pd1 and then actively homeless in pd2. Whenever his parents are seen, they’re a lot more assertive with him. Williams dads’ first description mentioning how he “easily imposes on William”, Williams mom immediately forming a genuine dislike of Vyncent and never letting it go. The only reason they didn’t take William home then was because William begged them not to. Like William’s dad punched Tide!!! A guy who’s so into superheroes and clearly otherwise really loves Tide as a hero punched him because Mr Wisp fully believed the guy wasn’t taking care of his son well enough!!!
And Mrs Wisp constantly shading Vyncent, glaring at him, refusing his company when William tries to get his parents to leave David’s apartment post-grayscale… her words being “one day you’re going to have to start telling me the truth” because that’s all pd William ever does in the few very rare times they see each other. Lie, lie and lie.
Williams parents mourned the old William when he died and kind of look like they tried to adapt to this ‘new’ William, but their tactics still never really worked out. It’s just kind of sad. I genuinely can’t help but pity Williams parents. Which is insane because upp William was the one who was often times so easy to pity. They’re not bad parents and they’re not bad people but they’re rolling dice against literal fate and it’s hopeless. They could raise William to be the most perfect kid in the world and he’d still die one day and become the Wisperer. They could have done whatever they wanted, grounded him, taken away privileges, and he still would have snuck out at night to hunt ghosts with his friends.
Reminds me how William in upp 2.2 said that he avoids the only cliff in deadwood. He could avoid it all he likes, he still ended up there eventually, and he still ended up falling down. Hashtag miserable
