#ough this is like christmas 2 the sequel for me

[clegfly]

SHES REAL SHE WSW REAL WRWASH EREWAL ESHE SREAL DSHES RESL EDSHES REALS SHES AJDHFJFHJHTRJFRHJHFJSFHJ

oh danny oh danny if i had my procreate rn it would be over for me so over for me she would be drawn and drawn and drawn and drawn and drawn and my fingers would fall off SCREAMING SHES REAL THE SUSPENSE IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 and she's just as horrifying as i wanted her to be omg... okay augh calming down i need to get into cleg analysis mode RIGHT NOW

this. this description is so HORRIBLE/pos like. i feel like ive been in the omori fandom so long that after a while people have become a little desensitised to mari's death? like. yeah that's the main plot and sometimes you forget about the ramifications and implications of it even though thats what the game revolves around... and GOD this brought me RIGHT BACK DOWN TO EARTH (pun intended haha funny earth goddess) because this is so absolutely horrifying. Basil's subconscious so clouded by guilt that his grief over her death doesn't even manifest within the creature meant to represent her (but according to the tags it does elsewnhere so ooooooooooooh), but he instead just has this thing that constantly reminds him that that girl, not just some girl, but his FRIEND, his close friend, is little more than a rotting corpse in the ground because HE left her like that. Basil was only trying to help, to protect sunny by what he did, but he KNOWS what he did. And that, for a child, is SO FUCKING BRUTAL like GOD this is HORRENDOUS.

Also as you mentioned the similarities between sol and Ziemia- yeah you know I'm gonna talk about that. Because god god god god god OUGH

So. So one thing I want to bring up is how Mari and Basil, when it comes to self worth, image, love etc have opposing ideologies that clash which is what's really interesting about their dynamic to me and makes them one of my favourites to analyse.

Mari's convinced she's only worthy of being loved if she meets a criteria, if she works for it. It's a reward for her being perfect, it's a reward for curating herself in a respectable image, it's a reward for hurting herself (and sometimes, though by accident, even those she holds dear) to fit the idea of a perfect girl everyone can love, because Mari doesn't believe herself worthy of unconditional love.

But Basil, as he mentions multiple times, likes his friends for who they are. Basil loves when people are their authentic selves- that's why he's close with them. the thought that a real person, a real live person with traits and flaws and quirks can see him and love him and not abandon him is so precious and surreal to him. and he overall just adores his friends and he doesn't like seeing mari hurt and force herself to be something she's not, when he and the others already love her so much for who she is. As hero (or i suppose sunny, since its from his head) puts it, basil "likes when everyone's acting naturally and not like when they're in front of a camera", which i believe is a metaphor for basil's unconditional love and gratitude for his friends, and how much they loved him, and how he loves everything that makes them them, every single small flaw that makes them up, and wouldn't trade it for anything.

So isn't it strange that Basil uses that same ideology he goes against so often when imagining Sunny?

In Basil's eyes, or morseso how he's forced his eyes to see it, sunny is perfect. Sunny can do no wrong. It goes against Basil's love for naturality in his friends and their personalities, their quirks, their flaws, and it's quite literally impossible, but that is how he has made himself view sunny, because he cares about him so much, and can't face the fact that someone so good, someone he cherishes so much, could ever do something like that. That there must have been someone else, something else- that he could never do anything wrong. An almost false person incapable of wrong, no matter what.

And I think Ziemia is also a really stark reminder that Sol cannot, will not and does not work.

Once perfect, once viewed of the epitome of flawlessness and goodness- gone, replaced with nothing but decay. Nothing but haunting memories of lifeless bodies and grim parasites that inhabit the thoughts of death. Mari tried so hard to be perfect, and eventually, that pushing and pushing caught up to her and now there's nothing left. Nothing perfect, and certainly nothing alive, nothing Mari. She's really and truly gone forever, and she fronted and hid and changed her image so much that it's hard to keep her in one's memories- so instead all basil has now is that day, and her corpse- which i also think is symbolic for how the memory of mari's true personality is decaying and fading along with her- after she tried to hide herself and portray herself as perfect for so long, and now the memories of that person are disappearing... which i think is the whole point of spirit mari's arc in game so I'll save that for an analysis post about her instead JAHDJSHDJFHJ

Sol is the exact same thing as Ziemia. They're both deities and they're both puppets who are morally perfect and incapable of fault. But Ziemia's state as she is now is metaphorical for the fact that Basil knows that he's WRONG. Sunny is not perfect. Sunny cannot be perfect- it just doesn't work and ends with rot, ends with a worse state than one began in. Sunny can make mistakes and sunny can do bad things. Sunny can be wrong. Something he just can't face, just can't accept yet- so his subconscious flashes it in his face, in the form of his deceased friend who did to herself what Basil's mind is trying so desperately to do to Sunny.

Nobody is perfect. Nobody can be perfect, and trying to pursue the idea of it in humans only ends in tragedy and decay.

Once again, it's so horrible and miserable and brilliant like. Genuinely applauding you. AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

anyway i do have more to say lots more but ive already yapped like so hard so I'll finish that laters,,, for now ill end on the first thought i had when i saw her which was "omg coraline reference"

LIKE COME ON. GUYS,,, GUYS IM NOT CRAZY RIGHT??? JDHJSHFJHDJFH RAT PEOPLE GANG

the moment you’ve all been waiting for

Ziemia

Or as I’ve been calling her up until now- Rat Mari! Now to tell you the truth Rat Mari/Ziemia took me AGES to properly figure out and when I was first getting started with Marzenie I had no idea what to do about Mari- then I had the rot metaphor idea and decided “rats in the shape of a person is pretty horrible I could do that!”… thus, Mari shaped rat pile and some wooden limbs in there too for vague symbolism reasons? Which. What I mean by that is that I’m drawing a similarity between her and Sol

The whole thing with Sol is the idea of perfection, a person is not capable of perfection and so he must be a doll, must be wood and light and no more- Mari was once perfect too, but her idea is tainted and gone and all that remains is rot. Do you see what I’m saying here? I’m not sure honestly I’ve been brainfogged as hell lately and started this drawing two days ago only to finish it NOW, and to be totally honest the design isn’t everything I wanted from it… but it dawned on me sometime lately that what I do want would be very tedious to draw

I cannot physically draw enough rats for me to be happy with so I compromised with not that many rats- and they aren’t very good rats either I’m not that great with animals … anyhow! Why Ziemia? Well. I think I’ve brought it up before but the in-world explanation for this character is that she was once a nature goddess, like how Sol is a god of the sun- but she was tainted by something terrible and consumed by pests, so Ziemia (in my rudimentary understanding of the polish language thanks to imperfect software because I don’t actually know polish and am doing my best to choose correct translations) is a word that means Earth. There were alternate translations and other words I could’ve used, but I picked Ziemia because it’s 1: a relatively simple word that matches the other ones I’ve used and 2: sounds enough like a name that I find it easy to call a character that and 3: is relatively easy to pronounce for … what I imagine to be my mostly English speaking audience? What five of you there are- other then @/birdzman ! Who I think might actually be polish? Not sure but shout out to you if you’re reading this!! Not fully sure if I’m right but if so then uhhh I apologize for being a dumb little American because I doubt I’m doing these translations right, anyhow!

Rat Mari/Ziemia isn’t just accociated with rats, I also want her to have themes of decay and other scavenger animals such as maggots or worms, the focus on rats is to do with Marzenie’s setting, I guess the idea is that Rats invade homes in winter to survive, whereas bugs mostly die off in winter regardless of available human homes to inhabit, so rats are one of the only pest animals which persist through the snow, which is why they might appear in some places outside Ziemia’s tree area, whilst other associated creatures would be unique to that area

Last but not least of my statements on this character, Ziemia does not represent the grief of Mari’s death, but rather the tangible brutality of it, how death feels in the eyes of a child, the inherent horror of a corpse, of knowing a person was once alive is no longer so, the horror of feeling their body stiff and cold in your arms, arms that once held you … this is what the rot theme comes from, one of Basil’s frequent hallucinations is of her body, decaying on the rope, decaying where he left her.

Cough. YAY!!!!!