happy spooky season !!

[ID: Over the Garden Wall fanart. Wirt sits at the roots of a tree, patting Greg on the back. Greg is holding and talking to his frog, and Beatrice flutters overhead. They're overlooking a gray landscape, and leaves fly through the cloudy sky. End ID.]

I wish you to feel warm in the coming cold days

Here's to 10 years of being in the Unknown!

I tried to incorporate something from every episode, and while it was tedious, I am so proud of this piece!

[ID in Alt]

Liminal States in Over the Garden Wall

It's October which means it's time to talk about one of my favorite pieces of media in the entire world. If I was ever going to write a thesis (god forbid) it would be this. And forgive me if some of this stuff has been covered or talked about by the creators before. So, a liminal state is "of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional" The most important (imo) liminal state is that between life and death. There is the implication that the entire land over the garden wall is a near death experience for Wirt and Greg as we see them almost hit by a train and fall into the water. And of course we see the dead rising at the harvest festival as well. Another liminal state is that between childhood and adulthood. Wirt is a teenager and this is a coming of age story for him, learning to have agency and take responsibility for his actions. (side note: Is this why he finds a kindred spirit in Lorna? They both feel a lack of agency in their own life?) We also see the slow transition over the course of the series from fall to winter. The vibrant leaves and celebrations fade to somber winter as Wirt grows more hopeless. Another liminal state is pointed out by the people in the tavern. They call Wirt a pilgrim, a traveler on a sacred journey. And what is a journey if not a liminal state? Perhaps the woodcutter is also on a journey, a perpetual wanderer in his quest to keep his daughter's soul alive. Beatrice too is on a quest. Throughout all this, Greg remains unchanging. He's the rock (lol) of the show, keeping his positivity through the darkest times. His brush with a liminal state is his dream, a space between waking and sleep, where he goes on his own mini hero's journey. Anyway, those are just my disorganized thoughts. If you can think of anything I missed, I'd love to hear it.

After Wirt returns from the hospital, he starts visiting the graveyard more often. There are a handful of abandoned graves that clear up right about that time, too.

No one can guess why he spends so much time there, or the connection between the graves. They appear to be random people, after all.

People try asking his little brother, since he spends most of his time with the boy, but Greg's claims are unbeliavable and childish. Sometimes he says they've met them, they are their friends, and so on. Other times he tells stories not unlike fairytales with speaking birds and evil woods.

Asking Wirt himself turns out to be even more confusing, since his only answer is "they were nice people, once" and nothing more.

His poetry, however, tells of emotions hidden, and has a certain line that has appeared quite often between beautifully woven lines...

over the garden wall is about how the police ruin everything

wirt and greg wouldn't have almost died and gone to the unknown if the police weren't fucking around trying to scare the kids, causing them to panic and run

Broke: it's Greg's fault they ended up in the unknown

Woke: it's Wirts fault the ended up in the unknown

Bespoke: it's the cop who was chasing them's fault they ended up in the unknown

i rewatched over the garden wall last night and i forgot how fucking funny it is.

greg is one of the best cartoon characters of all time. he's so annoying he manages to piss off the evil eldritch abomination that lives in the woods just by following its instructions to the letter, like some kind of trickster god.

at the moment where it seems all hope is lost and he is being turned into a tree, he coughs up some leaves and beatrice is like "oh man he even has leaves growing inside of him" and he replies "nah i was just eating leaves".

it's such a good miniseries

Over the Garden Wall is SUCH a fascinating show to me for a myriad of reasons. But one of the things that stuck with me was the symbolism of the Woodsman and his lantern. TW for discussions on grief and unhealthy coping mechanisms (that I might get wrong, just as a warning).

I'm sure this has been said before, but to me it's just such a fascinating representation of how we unintentionally keep despair alive by clinging to our overwhelming grief of those we lost. Maybe I'm misinterpreting something or looking too deeply into it, but it's just. The lantern that the Woodsman keeps lighting in the hopes that his daughter's soul will be kept alive through it is, in actuality, keeping the Beast alive. And in a similar way I've read tales and actually studied grief theories about how people keep the memory of their loved one alive; at first, it's a good thing, and it can take however long or short you need to it be since grief seems to be something that generally never really goes away.

But there can come a point where all you live for is the dead, which is what the Woodsman was doing in laboring day and night to keep the lantern alive. And in doing so, you start to poison yourself and, rather than keeping the person you lost in living memory, you start to keep alive the despair and darkness. You start to keep alive the Beast rather than the soul of your daughter, in other words. Sometimes, it's intentional, though. "If I let go of this despair and anguish of mine, doesn't that mean I'll forever lose that person I loved?" And sometimes, it's unintentional.

The conclusion of it is that you have to let them go...you have to let that despair (not grief, but the poisonous and hopeless grief) go. Maybe, like Wirt did, through unflinching practicality and sheer knowledge rather than emotion. Or something else. But maybe, then, you'll find that when the lantern of your despair is gone, it'll be dark at first but you'll slowly start to see a grander light. And maybe, you'll find that your daughter is still alive anyway, in the light rather than in the darkness.

over the garden wall is like. it's a fairy tale. it's the first truly american fairy tale. it's a subversion of fairy tales. it's about responsibility. it's about how unfair responsibility can be. it's about family. it's about how your choices affect others. it's about death. it's about winter. it's about giving up. it's about never giving up. it's about finding the perfect name for a frog. it's about finding yourself along the way. it's about being lost but coming to realize that was the best thing for you. it's about stories. it's about how all our stories interconnect. it's about how we're all just stories to each other. it's about how something doesn't need to be real to be true and something doesn't need to be true to be real. it's about choosing your family and being stuck with your family. it's about really seeing the monster. it's about understanding that you've been carrying something that you never should've been carrying in the first place. it's about not throwing rocks at bluebirds. it's about death again. it's about having no cents. it's about searching for something that was at home the entire time. it's about perspective. it's about how we view things. it's about love. it's about doing the scary things. it's about bad teenage poetry and clarinet music. it's really about death this time. it's all a dream. it really happened. it's all a dream that really happened. it's about being the one that got your sibling in the river and so being the one that drags them out. it's about not stealing rocks from old ladies but also that's not always that big of a deal. it's about the woods. it's about the threshold of adulthood. it's about the space between life and death and waking and dreaming. it's about jason funderburker.

Not done thinking about Over the Garden Wall. The first time I watched, it felt like a twist that eidelwood trees are people. When Greg was becoming one, this felt like brand-new information.

But! In Songs of the Dark Lantern, they straight-up tell you that, and I didn't catch it until my second watch. The tavern keeper sings "once your will begins to spoil/ he turns you into a tree of oil/ and puts you in his lantern for to burn"

I have no idea why I didn't catch that. It feels intentional, but if it was idk how they managed to misdirect your attention from the lyrics being sung. Maybe it's just me. Let's find out.

the line “as autumn colors fall” makes me go insAAANE cuz i’m pretty sure it’s functionally a zeugma—incorporating both uses of the world like “as autumn colors fall” as in the colors are falling or “as autumn colors fall” as in autumn is coloring fall AAUGHHH I LOVE THAT LINE SM

I'll never be over how 3/4 of OtGW is like "Hey look! Crazy spooky random hijinks!" And then you get to the last quarter and it's like "We are observed even when we think we are invisible and our own fears and self-absorption are what make us vulnerable and hurt the people we love Wake up and recognize the love that is already around you and start living for more than just yourself before what's most important slips from your grasp"

You know. Like a normal kids show.

Over The Garden Wall is so sad when you think about it because you have these two little boys (KIDS) who are seconds away from death and are clinging onto life by a HAIR and they don't even know it because they're experiencing the world of Purgatory as they drown.

That's fucking wild.

1) Greg's wish was to bargain with the Beast for Wirt's life.

2) Wirt was only able to break off the edelwood roots and get up once the Beast had accepted the bargain.

3) The Beast's acceptance was conditional on Greg completing the 3 impossible tasks. If Greg gave up, he would have been giving in to despair and therefore become the Beast's rightful victim and the Beast would have had both of them.

4) Only someone who refused to give in to despair, and therefore did not belong to the Beast, could trade their life for someone who already belongs to the Beast.

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

nah i got more to say about this cause i genuinely think this show handles this kind of relationship in such a refreshingly honest way. whenever you see a step/half-sibling relationship in kids media its always such overdramatic nonsense with one character screaming “I HATE YOU!!!” and a whole big dramatic crying scene but we dont get that here. wirt doesnt hate greg. the resentment is there, absolutely - but more than anything, wirt is INDIFFERENT to greg. he doesnt even think of greg as his brother, which his song makes pretty clear given his wording:

and the disconnect between them is made plain through small, but notable actions throughout the show. on more than one occasion, wirt leaves greg behind (one time after “jokingly” telling the frog cops to take greg instead), doesnt seem that bothered when he goes off by himself, is slow to humor him but quick to pass the buck onto him, and just generally, is so busy wallowing in his own fear and misery that he allows greg to get into some really dangerous situations for a pure lack of concern. the only time we see wirt really get angry at greg is in the flashback scene, and because greg was trying to HELP him. to really rub salt in the wound, that scene is immediately followed by wirt jumping out of the way of the train - and leaving greg behind.

thats not to say that wirt really wanted greg to get hurt or anything like that. i think its more that wirt doesnt truly understand the position hes in, nor what the woodsman told him in the first episode - “you are the elder child; YOU are responsible for you and your brothers’ actions!” - until greg is taken by the beast. greg is willing to sacrifice himself for wirt without a second thought, but wirt would never have done the same because he is self-absorbed to such an extent that he doesnt understand his responsibility - and failure - to protect greg until its almost too late.

over the garden wall is a GREAT coming-of-age story for a lot of reasons, but i think the development of wirt and gregs relationship is my absolute favorite part of it. wirt goes from thinking of greg as some kid hes stuck with to immediately asking for greg after nearly dying, and the path they took to get there is crafted so perfectly. i fuckin love this show bro ksdfhjkdsf