jam

unfinished though

His goals are unknown, his appearance are calculated to the every little detail, his mouth never lets out anything that doesn't profit him. He had learned everyone by heart, making it appear that they're friendly and not just a mean to reach the ultimate goal.

at the beginning, wandering circus members dont understand bai liu or even fully trust him at times. their teamwork is rough and messy. they know basically nothing abt bai liu. theres even a comedic scene of liu jiayi berating mu sicheng and mu ke when theyre trying to save bai liu bc none of them can predict where bai liu could be, despite bai liu having such a strong grasp on all of their psychology.

but then as the story slowly progresses, you see glimpses of how wandering circus members come to fully understand bai liu, despite bai lius own unreliable narration abt how others perceive him

it starts with them understanding bai lius patterns, thought process, and goals. its most obvious in forest frontier where jiayi and tang erda correctly predict why bai liu is doing things like sending them away and causing them to suffer.

then the hugest turning point is 5buildings. bai liu gets tortured for such a long time in front of them, sacrificing himself for them, and they see his bravado abt not caring for others ripped apart. bai six directly rips off bai lius lies abt seeing them as property, making bai liu confront his own love for his teammates. and wandering circus Sees That

and the end of 5buildings reveals that bai liu had told liu jiayi of his plan on intentionally losing that match, and she had acted along to help him. this further establishes how far bai liu has grown, as hes fully revealing his plan to his teammate when previously he wouldve kept it to himself

a bunch of other stuff related to this happens but the most significant and devastating moment that proves how much wandering circus understand and KNOW what kind of person bai liu is, is the drowning man arc.

each characters final moments display how much theyve grown to truly love and understand bai liu.

mu sicheng knows how thin skinned and easily embarrassed bai liu gets abt mushy questions.

mu ke knows bai liu disliked him when they first met, knows bai liu will never let him die bc thats the type of person bai liu is

liu jiayi who is so similar to bai liu thinks abt all his negative traits but cant help remembering more of how kind and gentle and nurturing he was, finally making her own choice to die for wandering circus

tang erda has a DEVASTATING but amazing scene of beating the shit out of cen buming and laying out all the genuine good bai liu has done for others that readers may forget under the layers of unreliable narration and bai lius constant downplaying of his own good deeds. it shows how tang erda has changed /so much/ from when we first met him. hes gone from blindly hating bai liu to being wary of him to seeing and understanding what kind of person bai liu is: a good man.

anyways,, that trend on tiktok w Bai Liu and Xie Ta <3 (pls ignore the shakiness lol)

and the raw arts below!

but what i find rlly interesting is as he adapts to the way the game works, a really strong advantage bai liu has is his familiarity with horror games as both a player and a game designer.

his experience working on horror games makes him think not just abt Surviving or winning, but he thinks abt what the DEVELOPER would think or do.

a lot of his decisions come from the thought "well if i were designing this game, /i/ would do this." and well we all know why this mentality guides him on the right path, bc in a sense he DID design the game

its also why bai liu has such an edge over other players that are also smart. i mean for an mc thats noted as very intelligent, bai liu isnt even the smartest character in the story. hell, you could argue he isnt even the smartest in his own team (liu jiayi has a higher intelligence value).

yet bai liu exceeds SO MUCH in the games precisely bc his mentality towards them is exactly that: its a game. he treats it as a game, smth thats solvable and designed in mind to be PLAYED.

it gives him an extremely powerful intuition abt what to do and secret routes he can take.

will always remember how, literally right after remembering his extremely tragic childhood of xie tas death, he immediately recovers with a smile and goes "back to work" in trying to get tang erdas soul.

and then after that when hes alone he Immediately tries to drown and trash the entire facility bc hes so devastated abt xie ta.

another good example is after ice age where he seems so normal on the surface and jumps back into business, taking control of the situation so calmly and jumping into another game.

i got into it at the start of high school lol. bai liu influenced quite a lot of my personality development, and now ive been spared from consumerism.

so yeah, naturally, i draw art of it, oc and all. most of the official arts we have got kind of peeve me bcs most of the side characters (not in the circus) look exactly the same.

sorry that the imgs are low quality, they are screenshots of a canvas.